Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
U.S. Requests License for Plutonium Shipment to France
IAEA finds new nuclear safeguard breaches in Iran
Iran's Leader Backs Deal On Inspections
ElBaradei: Iran Didn't Comply with NPT Commitments
Israel Allegedly Fielding Sea-Based Nuclear Missiles
Japan eyes revising postwar constitution
N. Korean Reactor Project May End
N. Korea Rips U.N. Nuke Watchdog in Vote
Bush Hints at North Korea Security Agreement
Kim wants to rule all Korea, defector warns
N. Korean Reactor Project May End
Russian enriched uranium 'works for' the USA
Contracts Awarded to Replace Russian Reactors With Fossil-Fuel Plants
Curbing Nuclear Proliferation
Atomic Agency Chief Urges Global Controls on Nuclear Fuel
U.S. Civilian Nuclear Reactor to Produce Weapons Material
Defense Science Board Calls for New Nuclear Weapons Capabilities
Agency sued over cleanup at nuclear plant
AEP applies to NRC to relicense Ohio Cook plant
Groups to petition against VY uprate
US will deny aid to countries that refuse court immunity deals
Perle warns Germany: stop backing France
Senate Approves $87 Billion For Iraq
Senate Sends Spending Bill for War Costs to President
Lawmaker Steps Back From Letter to Bush
MILITARY
Proposed Afghan Constitution Fits U.S. Model
Uganda president: Poor nations help rich
Asian and Pacific Leaders Pledge to Control Shoulder-Fired Missiles
Thaksin faces storm over status as upgraded US ally
Indonesia Extends Martial Law in Unsettled Province
GAO Covertly Buys Bioweapons Gear from Defense Department
New U.S., Russian Chemical Destruction Deadlines Approved
Man Arrested After Explosion in the Hague
Iranians Mark 1979 U.S. Embassy Seizure
Explosions Rock the Center of Baghdad for a Second Night
In Die-Hard City, G.I.'s Are Enemy
'The Battlefield for All Iraq'
Four Wounded in Baghdad Blasts on U.S. HQ
Arafat Extends Term of Emergency Cabinet
Sharon Departs Moscow With Only Sympathy
Powell Presses Nicaragua to Destroy Missiles
Germany Questions Legality of Iraq War
Johnston Atoll: The end of an era
NASA Supporters Seek National Debate on Space Goals
Boeing Establishes Orbital Space Program Office
Classified U.S. Report On Iraq Sought by U.N.
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
U.N. Report: al-Qaida Trained in Somalia
ACTIVISTS
Arrests of Dissident Iranians Seen as Hard-Line Retaliation
Palestinian Activist Is Released
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- europe
U.S. Requests License for Plutonium Shipment to France
November 4, 2003
Arms Control Today
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2003_11/newsbriefs.asp#USrequestslicense
The Department of Energy has filed an application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission seeking permission to ship up to 140 kg (308 lbs) of weapons-grade plutonium oxide to France next year to advance U.S. efforts to convert excess U.S. plutonium stocks into mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel. MOX is a combination of plutonium oxide and uranium oxide that can be used in nuclear reactors.
According to the license request submitted by the Energy Department Oct. 1, the program is "necessary to obtain...approval for large-scale use of weapon[s]-grade MOX fuel in commercial reactors." The Bush administration decided in January 2002 to convert U.S. stocks of excess weapon-grade plutonium to MOX fuel as the primary means of eliminating 34 tons of plutonium no longer necessary for military use in compliance with a 2000 agreement with Russia. (See ACT, March 2002.) Under the plan, the Energy Department would ship plutonium from Los Alamos National Laboratory to France's Cadarache MOX facility.
The plutonium would be converted into MOX fuel, returned to the United States, and tested in the Catawba nuclear power plant in South Carolina to "confirm fuel performance and to demonstrate the United States' capability to receive, inspect, [and] store the fuel assemblies at commercial reactors." The Energy Department requested that the application review be completed by June 15, 2004, with an eye toward shipping the material in August 2004.
The United States currently is developing its own MOX fabrication facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. According to Energy Department officials, the United States must process the test fuel in France because it is unable to manufacture MOX fuel at this time. The U.S. facility is slated to start up in 2007.
In an attempt to head off concerns about possible proliferation and safety risks in transferring the weapons-grade material, the Energy Department application outlined security measures that would be taken. The Energy Department's Safe Secure Transport system would provide guarded transportation of the material on the U.S. side, and the fissile material would be safeguarded in accordance with the U.S.-EURATOM peaceful nuclear agreement in France and while in transit overseas. The French government assured U.S. officials that material safeguards would be implemented in compliance with international regulations and that France would take security measures "comparable to those used" in the United States.
-------- iran
IAEA finds new nuclear safeguard breaches in Iran
VIENNA (AFP)
Nov 04, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031104161040.m19m2m6s.html
The UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, will report that Iran has failed to honor some international nuclear safeguards, at a key meeting later this month, the director was quoted as saying on Tuesday.
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei told the Spanish newspaper El Pais that new breaches will be detailed in a report that the IAEA is to present to its board of governors on November 20.
"We reported breaches in the past and there will be new ones in this upcoming report," ElBaradei was quoted by his spokesman Mark Gwozdecky as saying.
It was the first confirmation by the IAEA that new Iranian information, filed ahead of a deadline October 31 for Iran to prove it is not developing nuclear weapons, showed Iranian failures in honoring nuclear safeguards agreements.
Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, had said October 24 that there were disclosures in the report of "what could be considered failures" to adhere to the safeguards regime of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), of which Iran is a signatory.
He said these were "in the same line" as failures by Iran the IAEA had listed in a report in June.
Salehi said the new failures involved "some lab tests" but he did not provide details.
The United States accuses Iran of secretly working to manufacture highly enriched uranium, which can be used to make atomic bombs, and says Tehran should be judged in non-compliance with the NPT regime, something which would oblige the IAEA to report Iran to the United Nations Security Council.
The IAEA board of governors is to meet November 20 to judge Iranian compliance.
Salehi said the failures were "not significant, not of importance but we felt we had to reveal it anyway" in order to answer the IAEA's questions about its nuclear activities.
"It is 100-percent clear that Iran has never been involved in anything that would indicate it was involved in a nuclear weapons program," Salehi said.
----
Iran's Leader Backs Deal On Inspections
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, November 4, 2003; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59815-2003Nov3.html
TEHRAN, Nov. 3 -- Iran's supreme leader has publicly endorsed the agreement opening the Iranian nuclear program to tougher inspections but threatened "a slap in the mouth" for anyone who challenges the country's right to develop a peaceful atomic program.
"Iran made a correct and wise decision, and it does not mean surrender," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told senior clerics here on Sunday. "It neutralized the American and Zionist plot."
Khamenei's endorsement, his first public statement on the agreement, served to answer hard-liners who have mounted street protests against it. But he also repeatedly warned that Iran would "definitely stop this process" if it detected threats to its "national interest and the values of the system."
"If those who have entered debates with us or our enemies or the global power centers ever try to exercise caprice toward us . . . everything will be ruined," Khamenei said.
Khamenei, a senior Islamic cleric who succeeded the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as supreme leader, holds ultimate power in Iran's theocratic government, and the Oct. 21 pact with three European foreign ministers was widely understood to have his blessing. The deal averted a crisis just days before a deadline for Iran to fully disclose its nuclear program.
The Oct. 31 deadline was set by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. office responsible for enforcing the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Iran has been accused of violating. Those accusations stem from a series of discoveries and conflicting explanations about secret facilities in Iran that could eventually produce weapons-grade uranium.
The last-minute agreement prevented the matter from being referred to the U.N. Security Council, where the United States was preparing to insist on a resolution imposing sanctions on Iran, which President Bush has dubbed part of an "axis of evil."
The European envoys shared Washington's concerns but brought less historical baggage to Tehran. Tuesday marks 24 years to the day since militant students took over the U.S. Embassy here, an anniversary that hard-liners are expected to commemorate with a march and chants of "Death to America." Iran and the United States severed diplomatic relations and have routinely cast one another as villains.
The European Union, however, has in recent years pursued a policy of engagement leading toward a trade agreement much desired by Iran. Negotiating its nuclear future with the foreign ministers of France, Great Britain and Germany offered Iran "a great bonus, in terms of heading off some U.S. pack-leading," said a Western diplomat here.
The Europeans continued to insist on the conditions Iran eventually accepted: suspension of all uranium enrichment activities, a full accounting of Iran's nuclear program and acceptance of IAEA inspections on short notice.
"I think they realized at the eleventh hour that this was going to lead down a very unpleasant road," the diplomat said.
--------
ElBaradei: Iran Didn't Comply with NPT Commitments
November 4, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iran-nuclear-elbaradei.html
MADRID (Reuters) - The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Iran's declaration showed it had previously failed to comply with commitments under the global non-proliferation pact, a Spanish newspaper reported Tuesday.
``We have analyzed certain parts of the documents and they show that Iran failed to comply with some of its commitments under the (nuclear Non-Proliferation) Treaty,'' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei said in an interview published in El Pais newspaper.
On Oct. 23, Iran gave the IAEA a declaration that it described as a complete and accurate history of its nuclear program, which Tehran insists is peaceful.
This declaration was delivered to the United Nations to meet an October 31 deadline set by the IAEA governing board for Iran to come clean about its nuclear program, which Washington says is a front for building an atomic bomb.
``I will give further information on this next week,'' ElBaradei said in the interview which took place Monday in New York.
Next week, diplomats in Vienna are expected to receive ElBaradei's latest report on IAEA inspections in Iran. This report will be the subject of discussion at the IAEA Board of Governors meeting on November 20.
Although the contents of Iran's declaration have been kept confidential, Iran's ambassador to the IAEA Ali Akbar Salehi said Tehran had been forced to be ``discreet'' about many of its nuclear activities due to decades of sanctions.
This was why it had repeatedly not informed the IAEA of many of its atomic activities, Salehi said.
IRAN'S FAILURES TO COMPLY ARE HISTORY
The United States has been pushing the 35-nation IAEA governing board to declare Iran in ``non-compliance'' with its Safeguards Agreement under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Such a finding would require the board to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions. Diplomats have told Reuters that Washington has little support on the IAEA board and that Iran will likely escape censure by the council.
Furthermore, Iran says its failures to inform the IAEA of its activities are all in the past and that it has since declared all activities and facilities to the U.N. inspectors.
ElBaradei said there were ``divisions'' on the board about whether to inform the council about Iran's failures. He also made it clear the inspection process in Iran was far from over, indicating that a finding of non-compliance would be premature.
``There are still a lot of things to analyze,'' ElBaradei said. ``I don't think we will have finished before the November 20 Board of Governors meeting.''
ElBaradei said the investigation into the origin of traces of weapons-grade highly-enriched uranium found at two sites in Iran would take months to complete.
Iran says the traces came from contaminated machinery purchased abroad, an explanation that has met with skepticism among countries like the United States which suspect that Iran either bought or purified the uranium itself for use in a bomb.
``We have to identify the country of origin of the contamination, go to that country, take traces to verify if, in fact, the traces of enriched uranium are from contamination and not home-produced,'' ElBaradei said. ``(We need) at least another couple of months, until the beginning of next year.''
-------- israel
Israel Allegedly Fielding Sea-Based Nuclear Missiles
Wade Boese
November 2003
Arms Control Today
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2003_11/Israel.asp/_{P
U.S. and Israeli officials have declined directly to address an October news report that Israel was arming U.S.-supplied cruise missiles with nuclear warheads. The news came amid increased international attention to nuclear weapons in the Middle East as the United States and European nations sought to halt Iran's suspected pursuit of nuclear weapons.
The Los Angeles Times reported Oct. 12 that two senior Bush administration officials said Israel has modified U.S. Harpoon cruise missiles, which can be launched from submarines, to deliver nuclear warheads. The paper added that an Israeli official confirmed the American statements. All three spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., would not respond to the report. When contacted Oct. 20, he simply reiterated Israel's long-standing position that it will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East.
Although Israel refuses to confirm or deny whether it possesses nuclear weapons, it is almost universally recognized as having built up an atomic arsenal. Typical estimates of the arsenal's size range from weapons numbering in the high tens to a couple hundred. Israel fields medium-range ballistic missiles and U.S.-supplied fighter aircraft capable of delivering nuclear weapons.
Department of State spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters Oct. 14 that he would not look into the Harpoon allegation because "it's not the kind of subject we readily share information on." Although Washington routinely condemns countries hostile to the United States for seeking nuclear weapons, it stays mum on Israel's arms.
The Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), which oversees U.S. military sales abroad, told Arms Control Today Oct. 23 that Israel's contract for Harpoon missiles does not explicitly prohibit Israel from modifying them to carry nuclear warheads but added that "we have had no reason to believe that the government of Israel had any intention to modify or substitute the warheads of these missiles."
More than 100 Harpoon missiles have been exported to Israel. The United States, according to DSCA, has also sold Harpoons to 25 other countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.
Robert Algarotti, a spokesman for Harpoon manufacturer Boeing, said Oct. 20 that the company has never studied whether the missile could be armed with a nuclear warhead.
However, a former top U.S. nuclear-weapon scientist and a leading U.S. missile expert interviewed each said the Harpoon could carry a nuclear warhead. They said the issue was whether Israel could build a warhead small enough for the missile, which has a relatively light payload capability of 220 kg and a short range of roughly 100 kilometers.
Israel's receipt of two Dolphin-class diesel submarines from Germany in 1999 and a third in 2000 was widely perceived at the time as a move to acquire sea-based launching options for nuclear weapons. Past news reports further identified the Harpoon missile, which the United States transferred to Israel several years ago, as the potential delivery vehicle.
The United States is party to the 33-member Missile Technology Control Regime aimed at restricting exports of missiles capable of delivering nuclear, chemical, or biological warheads. Although the regime does not ban such transfers, there is a "strong presumption to deny" them. Washington is further committed in the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty "not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce" nuclear proliferation.
The United States also endorses the concept of a Middle East without weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons. Yet it does not press Israel on the subject, saying such an arrangement must be "freely arrived at" by all the countries in the region.
-------- japan
Japan eyes revising postwar constitution
November 04, 2003
By Colin Joyce
LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$4ZC5IRW2IBHT5QFIQMFSFFWAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2003/11/04/wjap04.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/11/04/ixworld.html
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031103-103416-6375r.htm
TOKYO - Japan's constitution should be rewritten to remove or amend pacifist safeguards imposed after World War II, according to a poll of candidates representing the country's governing party published yesterday.
The survey by the Asahi newspaper showed that constitutional revision was favored by almost 90 percent of candidates from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which is expected to win this week's general election comfortably.
It also showed that some 60 percent of candidates from the main opposition Democrats are in favor of revising the constitution, though not necessarily Article 9, which prevents Japan from maintaining an offensive military capability.
The poll did not specifically ask which part of the constitution should be changed, but it is understood that many LDP members, including Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, believe Article 9 should be changed. The article has been interpreted by successive governments as preventing Japan from exercising collective self-defense - the use of force to counter an attack on a foreign ally.
But that has been increasingly in doubt as Japan's security situation has changed. Politicians and foreign-policy analysts have become acutely concerned by the erratic behavior of North Korea, which is openly pursuing nuclear weapons.
Earlier this year, the defense minister said a pre-emptive attack on North Korea would be considered if a missile capable of reaching Japan was being made ready. In 1998, North Korea launched a missile over Japanese airspace, demonstrating its ability to hit Tokyo.
The Japanese Constitution renounces the right to make war and maintain an army. But yesterday's poll indicates a growing consensus that this needs to be amended to enable Japan to play a greater role in regional security, particularly in the face of the threat from North Korea.
Any revision is likely to be preceded by a debate about how Article 9 can be altered to reflect the changing international situation without moving too radically away from Japan's special status as a demilitarized nation.
In August, Mr. Koizumi suggested that the LDP should revise the constitution, including Article 9, by November 2005.
The United States has pressed Japan to play a bigger role in security and some Japanese want the country to be able to exercise collective self-defense.
Right-wingers say it is too reliant on the "umbrella" provided by its alliance with the United States and that it is time to become a "normal country" with a recognized military force to back its foreign policy.
-------- korea
N. Korean Reactor Project May End
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 4, 2003; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59783-2003Nov3?language=printer
The international consortium building two nuclear reactors to provide energy to North Korea is likely to agree today to suspend the project, effectively killing it, U.S. and Asian officials said yesterday.
Terminating the reactor project -- centerpiece of a 1994 deal by the Clinton administration to freeze North Korea's nuclear weapons capabilities -- has long been a goal of key members of the Bush administration. But the move has been resisted by its partners in the project, particularly South Korea, who argued that ending or even suspending it would needlessly rile North Korea and escalate the crisis over its nuclear weapons ambitions.
Construction of the light-water reactors thus has continued even though Pyongyang disclosed last year it had violated the Clinton accord, quit the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and announced it was building nuclear weapons. More than $1.4 billion has been spent pouring the concrete for the facilities and building housing and recreation facilities for hundreds of construction workers, although it never reached the stage where North Korea received sensitive equipment.
Officials from the United States, Japan, South Korea and the European Union, which form the executive board of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Corp. (KEDO), have been meeting informally in New York since yesterday to discuss the suspension. The executive director of KEDO, Charles Kartman, will be directed to inform the North Koreans of the decision, which would be formally ratified at another meeting this year.
U.S. officials have agreed to settle for a "one-year" suspension to placate South Korean officials. But the Bush administration informed its partners that restarting the project a year from now would require the unanimous consent of the executive board -- and the United States will not provide the necessary vote.
"This ought to kill it," said Henry Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center and a leading critic of the 1994 agreement. "The heart may still be beating but there is no brain function."
Under that agreement, which froze a plutonium facility at Yongbyon, the United States supplied heavy fuel oil to North Korea to ease its pressing electrical needs and assisted in the construction of the light-water reactors. South Korea and Japan agreed to foot much of the bill for the reactors, which Clinton officials said were designed for peaceful use.
KEDO's Web site proclaims it is "promoting peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and beyond." The site includes photos of the construction site at Kumho, on North Korea's coast, and the elaborate facilities for construction workers, which include a golf range, restaurants and gymnasiums.
The White House signaled its determination to kill the project last month when it announced $3.7 million in administrative expenses for KEDO. Noting that no part of this money would be used for construction, the statement added, "The members of the KEDO Executive Board will convene soon and the United States believes it should then agree formally to stop work on the LWR [light-water reactor] project."
The move to suspend the project comes shortly after North Korea agreed to attend another session of multinational talks to settle the nuclear crisis. Nevertheless, U.S. and Japanese officials pressed South Korea hard to finally agree to a suspension, officials said.
The original deal, reached shortly before Republicans took control of Congress, was fiercely attacked by conservatives, who argued the reactors could be diverted for military purposes. Some Clinton officials believed North Korea would collapse before the reactors were completed, and numerous deadlines were missed as the work proceeded slowly. When it came into power, the Bush administration was even less inclined to support the project.
Last October, after North Korea admitted having a secret nuclear project in violation of the 1994 agreement, the United States pressed allies to join it in suspending the fuel oil shipments. The United States also briefly seized a ship carrying North Korean missiles to Yemen. In response, North Korea evicted international weapons inspectors, restarted the Yongbyon reactor and pledged to build a nuclear arsenal.
----
N. Korea Rips U.N. Nuke Watchdog in Vote
Tue Nov 4, 2003
By EDITH M. LEDERER,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=516&ncid=721&e=10&u=%2Fap%2F20031105%2Fap_on_re_as%2Fun_nuclear_threats
UNITED NATIONS - North Korea voted against a resolution supporting the U.N. nuclear agency late Tuesday, calling the U.N. body "a tool of the United States" and using derogatory language to accuse Japan of backing U.S. plans to attack the communist nation.
The General Assembly resolution backing the annual report of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which was presented Monday by its director general Mohamed ElBaradei, was approved by a vote of 129-1. It is not legally binding but reflects the support of the international community.
North Korea's deputy ambassador Kim Chang Guk objected to a reference in the resolution to North Korea's implementation of an agreement with the IAEA to safeguard nuclear material as "totally irrelevant." He denied U.S. claims that North Kor
----
Bush Hints at North Korea Security Agreement
Paul Kerr,
November 4, 2003
Arms Control Today
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2003_11/NorthKorea.asp?print
Some headway was made in October toward breaking the stalemate between the United States and North Korea, but it is far from clear that the year-long crisis surrounding North Korea's nuclear program will be settled anytime soon. President George W. Bush said Oct. 19 that the United States is willing to provide a written, multilateral guarantee that the United States will not attack North Korea-an indication that the United States will present a concrete offer to North Korea if future multilateral discussions are held. North Korea said Oct. 25 that it is willing to consider the still-developing U.S. proposal but announced earlier in the month that it is closer to developing additional nuclear weapons.
The U.S. proposal is still a work in progress and will be developed in consultation with the other participants in the six-party talks. Although the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Oct. 30 that North Korea has "in principle" accepted a new round of multilateral talks, no date has been set.
The crisis began in October 2002 when a U.S. delegation told North Korean officials that Washington possessed intelligence confirming Pyongyang's pursuit of a uranium enrichment program. Such a program can produce fissile material for nuclear weapons.
Since then, the crisis has escalated. North Korea pulled out of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), restarted its plutonium-based nuclear facilities frozen under the 1994 Agreed Framework, and regularly reported advances in its nuclear weapons capabilities. The Agreed Framework defused the first North Korean nuclear crisis by providing North Korea with heavy-fuel oil and two proliferation-resistant light-water reactors in exchange for freezing its plutonium program. Construction on the reactors has not been terminated, but the oil shipments were suspended in November 2002 in an effort to pressure North Korea.
The apparent decision to negotiate with North Korea is part of an evolution in stated U.S. policy. Administration officials had previously dismissed the idea of negotiating a settlement to the crisis as giving in to blackmail.
Two rounds of talks aimed at resolving the crisis have taken place in Beijing since October 2002. The United States, North Korea, and China took part in the first round in April and were joined by Japan, Russia, and South Korea for a second round in August. Neither round yielded an agreement. The United States has said its delegation to the August talks did not make an explicit offer but signaled Washington's willingness to compromise with North Korea. North Korea argues that Washington simply restated its previous policy, however, and U.S. allies have said they want the administration to be more flexible. (See ACT, October 2003.) Bush's statement came during a trip to Asia earlier this month, where he consulted with other participants in the six-party talks.
U.S. officials have said repeatedly that Washington has no intention of attacking North Korea and have indicated their willingness to provide a written agreement to this effect. Department of State officials said in September that the United States is willing to employ a step-by-step approach to resolve the crisis, rather than continuing to insist that North Korea first completely dismantle its nuclear facilities.
Still, the administration has also emphasized multilateral diplomacy with Pyongyang and said it wants any security agreement to be concluded within the context of the six-party talks. Bush said Oct. 19 that previous bilateral agreements with North Korea have failed, asserting that North Korea "cheated" on the Agreed Framework. Administration officials have previously argued that multilateral negotiations will be more effective than bilateral ones because North Korea will feel increased pressure to comply in a multilateral setting.
Although the Agreed Framework is a bilateral agreement, its implementation is multilateral in nature. For example, South Korea, Japan, and the European Union share membership on the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization's (KEDO) executive board. KEDO is the U.S.-led consortium that is charged with supplying the heavy-fuel oil and building the reactors under the Agreed Framework. The United States has not yet decided on a precise formulation for a security arrangement, but the United States has addressed the question in past official statements. For example, the Agreed Framework requires the United States to "provide formal assurances" to North Korea that the United States will not threaten or use nuclear weapons. Additionally, the two countries stated in an October 2000 Joint Communiqué that neither "would have hostile intent toward the other."
The Way Forward
After initially dismissing Bush's statement Oct. 21 as "laughable," a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said Oct. 25 that Pyongyang would "consider" Bush's comments, according to KCNA. The spokesman added, however, that any U.S. proposal would have to come with "the intention" for the two countries to "coexist" and be part of a step-by-step solution to the crisis. Pyongyang is currently evaluating the "intentions" behind Bush's remark, the spokesman said, labeling discussions of further six-party talks "premature." Secretary of State Colin Powell said Oct. 26 that North Korea contacted the United States about the matter two days before.
There are several potential obstacles to a settlement. One question is whether the U.S. proposal will be sufficient to satisfy North Korea's concerns about its relations with the United States. Pyongyang has condemned Washington's preference for multilateral solutions as a tactic intended to divert attention away from what Pyongyang regards as the real issue: Washington's "hostile policy" of placing economic pressure on North Korea and threatening it with military force, including use of nuclear weapons. In particular, North Korea cites a September 2002 document describing the U.S. National Security Strategy, which explicitly mentions North Korea and emphasizes pre-emptive action to counter threats from countries developing weapons of mass destruction. To justify their stated fears of a pre-emptive nuclear attack, North Korean officials cite a leaked version of the Bush administration's January 2002 classified Nuclear Posture Review, which lists North Korea as a country against which the United States should be prepared to use nuclear weapons in the event of a military confrontation.
The administration has pursued other aspects of a containment policy, such as attempting to persuade allies such as Japan and Australia to interdict Pyongyang's sources of hard currency. Moreover, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz argued in May that other regional powers should threaten to cut off aid to North Korea if it does not change its objectionable policies.
Bush made it clear during an Oct. 19 press conference that a formal nonaggression pact-a persistent North Korean demand-was "off the table." North Korea said Oct. 7 that it wants U.S. security assurances to come in the form of a treaty because it does not trust Congress or future administrations to adhere to policies made by any president, according to a KCNA statement. North Korea has frequently argued that the United States did not live up to its commitments under the Agreed Framework, citing delays in the reactors' construction and the administration's "hostile policy."
North Korea has also previously rejected the idea of a multilateral security agreement. An Aug. 19 KCNA statement dismissed such a plan as a diversionary tactic and referred to "the concept of 'collective security'" as "an insult" to North Korea, suggesting that Pyongyang wants to be seen as an equal to the United States in any negotiations.
The specifics of implementing any agreement may well prove to be another sticking point. Pyongyang has resisted the notion of dismantling its reactor before concluding an agreement with the United States because it believes the United States will simply pocket any concessions. Washington has yet to finalize either the specific steps required by each side or the sequence in which they will be implemented. It is also unclear how the United States intends to address other North Korean demands. Pyongyang has called on the United States to normalize bilateral diplomatic relations, refrain from hindering North Korea's "economic cooperation" with other countries, complete the reactors promised under the Agreed Framework, resume suspended fuel oil shipments, and increase food aid.
Pyongyang's declaration that it would discuss verification measures for any agreement "only after the [United States] drops its hostile policy" could also complicate a settlement.
Upping the Ante
Meanwhile, North Korea again upped the ante in the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula, announcing earlier this month that it had completed reprocessing the spent fuel rods from its five-megawatt nuclear reactor and implying that it was using the resulting plutonium to construct nuclear weapons. Pyongyang further increased concern Oct. 16 by issuing what may have been a veiled threat to test nuclear weapons.
North Korea had privately made the reprocessing claim earlier, but an Oct. 2 KCNA statement marked Pyongyang's first public pronouncement.
An Oct. 3 KCNA statement said that the country completed reprocessing the spent fuel rods in June, and an Oct. 2 statement noted that Pyongyang "made a switchover in the use" of the spent fuel "in the direction increasing [sic] its nuclear deterrent force." The earlier statement added that North Korea would continue to produce and reprocess additional spent fuel when deemed necessary.
According to Powell and other U.S. diplomats, North Korean officials on more than one occasion have told their U.S. counterparts that they had completed reprocessing the spent fuel.
But U.S. officials have expressed skepticism about the earlier announcements and continue to cast doubt on the North Korean claims. Powell told reporters Oct. 2 that Washington has "no evidence" that Pyongyang has reprocessed the spent fuel rods, adding that the United States would "continue to pursue diplomacy." North Korean officials have said Pyongyang possesses nuclear weapons, but it is unclear whether this is the case.
North Korea's possible suggestion that it may test nuclear weapons came in a Oct. 16 announcement from KCNA, which stated that Pyongyang will "take a measure to open its nuclear deterrent to the public as a physical force" if the United States refuses to change its negotiating stance.
The Oct. 2 KCNA statement also said that Pyongyang is "stepping up the preparations for the construction of a graphite-moderated reactor." Whether this statement refers to incomplete reactors whose construction was frozen under the Agreed Framework is uncertain, but the announcement could be a signal that North Korea intends to produce additional fissile material for nuclear weapons. Graphite-moderated reactors are better suited for producing nuclear weapons-grade fuel than their light-water replacements. These plants could produce enough fuel for approximately 30 nuclear devices per year, according to an August Congressional Research Service (CRS) report.
Powell has said that North Korea's fuel rods could yield enough plutonium for as many as six nuclear devices, and the CRS report estimates the reactor could produce enough fissile material for one weapon per year.
North Korea produced the spent fuel rods before agreeing to freeze operating the reactor and its related facilities in accordance with the Agreed Framework. North Korea announced in December that it was restarting the reactor, and U.S. officials confirmed in February that it had done so.
At the same time it announced its reprocessing claim, North Korea also reiterated two previous claims regarding its nuclear intentions. North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Su Hon said North Korea has no intention of exporting nuclear material to other countries, Xinhua News Agency reported Oct. 2. Additionally, the Oct. 2 KCNA statement repeated North Korea's claim that its nuclear weapons are solely for defensive purposes.
----
Kim wants to rule all Korea, defector warns
November 04, 2003
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20031104-120630-4270r.htm
The lifelong ambition of Kim Jong-il is to become dictator over a unified, communist Korea, a former top North Korean official said yesterday.
Hwang Jang Yop, the highest-ranking Pyongyang official to defect, also said in an interview with The Washington Times that North Korean ruler Kim Jong-il is a failed leader who has starved millions of his people but who is "brilliant" as a dictator.
Mr. Hwang, 81, said Mr. Kim's "priority in life is to become the supreme ruler of the unified Chosun, or, as you call it, Korea."
Speaking through an interpreter, he said he does not believe Mr. Kim would initiate a war against South Korea unless he was certain the communist forces would prevail, but that he would use nuclear weapons in a conflict.
Mr. Hwang said Mr. Kim should be judged by "the fruits of his labor, what he has done."
"Before Kim Jong-il came to power, there was his father, Kim Il-sung. No one starved to death under Kim Il-sung. However, after Kim Jong-il came to power, millions of people starved to death. The economy has been destroyed, and the whole government and the country became one big prison. As a politician, he is a failure."
The defector, also a former tutor and mentor to Mr. Kim, met with senior Bush administration and congressional officials last week. One official said Mr. Hwang provided important information in closed-door meetings on Pyongyang's nuclear program.
Mr. Hwang was a close aide to Mr. Kim's father, dictator Kim Il-sung, and is one of the few people outside North Korea who has intimate knowledge of the reclusive regime. He was the chief ghostwriter for Kim Il-sung and gave shape to the regime's philosophy of "juche," or self-reliance. He also helped promote Kim Jong-il's cult of personality and was a senior official in the Korean Worker's Party.
He broke with the younger Mr. Kim in February 1997 during a visit to China and later escaped to South Korea, where he heads an organization of former North Koreans that seeks to topple the dictatorship in Pyongyang and replace it with a democracy.
One U.S. State Department official compared the defection at the time to "Lenin defecting from the Soviet Union."
Asked by The Times whether Mr. Kim could be trusted to abide by nuclear accords, Mr. Hwang said: "That's a good question. People can change, and conditions can force a person to follow a certain path.
"However, if history is an indication, when the Geneva framework was entered into, North Korea, especially Kim Jong-il, failed to abide by the terms of the agreement. And I think there's a certain possibility that Kim Jong-il would follow the same path again."
Mr. Hwang said the North Korean regime's failures led it to seek nuclear weapons to maintain its grip on power and that Mr. Kim would be willing to use the weapons against South Korea in a conflict.
"I would think that by having these warheads, it would be possible to maintain the status quo of the dictatorial regime of North Korea," Mr. Hwang said.
"And also possibly use them against South Korea, to occupy South Korea by force."
In October 2002, North Korea disclosed to a U.S. official that it was developing nuclear weapons, despite a 1994 agreement banning such arms.
Talks on the issue have been under way since April between representatives of the United States, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia. A third meeting could be held before the end of year.
The 1994 Geneva agreement required Pyongyang to give up its nuclear arms program in exchange for help building two nuclear power stations. Work on the power stations was halted after North Korea disclosed it was building a uranium-based nuclear weapons program, in addition to a separate plutonium-based arms program that was to have been scrapped in 1994.
Mr. Hwang said he does not believe China and Russia took part in the nuclear arms program.
He said he favors efforts by the United States to curb North Korea's export of missiles and goods related to chemical, biological and nuclear arms. "It is possible that this will actually have the effect of limiting the radius of activities of the dictator, and that would eventually, I hope, help democratize North Korea."
U.S. intelligence agencies and private relief organizations estimate that since Kim Jong-il came to power, several million people have died from starvation caused by a mismanaged economy. Mr. Kim became North Korea's military commander in 1991 and took over as supreme leader after his father's death in 1994.
Ideologically, Mr. Kim is consumed by personal ambitions, Mr. Hwang said.
"What kind of ideology does he live by? This man is very egotistical. He is watching out for his self-interest, and his self-interest only. He believes that as the leader he can decide everything; that he owns everything; and that he is the center of everything. A totally egotistical man," he said.
"As a leader of his people, this man has been a failure," Mr. Hwang said. "However, as a dictator, in maintaining his dictatorial regime, this man has been brilliant."
Mr. Hwang said in the interview that the United States' global war against terrorism should be extended to North Korea, especially since President Bush included it as one of three "axis of evil" states. Iraq under Saddam Hussein and Iran were the other two states.
"After the occurrence of 9/11, the United States declared war on terror, and this was for human rights purposes," Mr. Hwang said. "No one opposed that war on terror, and essentially, when you fight for human rights, you are fighting for democracy, you are fighting against ones who are abusing human rights, and that would certainly include dictators. And fighting against a dictator is for the democracy of the world.
"I believe we need to have a common cause where we are fighting against the dictatorship for the purpose of establishing human rights and restoring human rights for people, and that is the principle of democracy that I believe that should be applied when it comes to North Korea - and that principle should be applied consistently," Mr. Hwang said.
The former North Korean official concludes a weeklong visit to the United States today. The visit was delayed for years by Seoul, which said it was worried Mr. Hwang could be targeted by North Korean agents while here.
His visit was arranged by the Defense Forum Foundation, which provides bipartisan educational programs on various defense-related topics for the benefit of Congress.
----
N. Korean Reactor Project May End
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 4, 2003; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59783-2003Nov3.html
The international consortium building two nuclear reactors to provide energy to North Korea is likely to agree today to suspend the project, effectively killing it, U.S. and Asian officials said yesterday.
Terminating the reactor project -- centerpiece of a 1994 deal by the Clinton administration to freeze North Korea's nuclear weapons capabilities -- has long been a goal of key members of the Bush administration. But the move has been resisted by its partners in the project, particularly South Korea, who argued that ending or even suspending it would needlessly rile North Korea and escalate the crisis over its nuclear weapons ambitions.
Construction of the light-water reactors thus has continued even though Pyongyang disclosed last year it had violated the Clinton accord, quit the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and announced it was building nuclear weapons. More than $1.4 billion has been spent pouring the concrete for the facilities and building housing and recreation facilities for hundreds of construction workers, although it never reached the stage where North Korea received sensitive equipment.
Officials from the United States, Japan, South Korea and the European Union, which form the executive board of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Corp. (KEDO), have been meeting informally in New York since yesterday to discuss the suspension. The executive director of KEDO, Charles Kartman, will be directed to inform the North Koreans of the decision, which would be formally ratified at another meeting this year.
U.S. officials have agreed to settle for a "one-year" suspension to placate South Korean officials. But the Bush administration informed its partners that restarting the project a year from now would require the unanimous consent of the executive board -- and the United States will not provide the necessary vote.
"This ought to kill it," said Henry Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center and a leading critic of the 1994 agreement. "The heart may still be beating but there is no brain function."
Under that agreement, which froze a plutonium facility at Yongbyon, the United States supplied heavy fuel oil to North Korea to ease its pressing electrical needs and assisted in the construction of the light-water reactors. South Korea and Japan agreed to foot much of the bill for the reactors, which Clinton officials said were designed for peaceful use.
KEDO's Web site proclaims it is "promoting peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and beyond." The site includes photos of the construction site at Kumho, on North Korea's coast, and the elaborate facilities for construction workers, which include a golf range, restaurants and gymnasiums.
The White House signaled its determination to kill the project last month when it announced $3.7 million in administrative expenses for KEDO. Noting that no part of this money would be used for construction, the statement added, "The members of the KEDO Executive Board will convene soon and the United States believes it should then agree formally to stop work on the LWR [light-water reactor] project."
The move to suspend the project comes shortly after North Korea agreed to attend another session of multinational talks to settle the nuclear crisis. Nevertheless, U.S. and Japanese officials pressed South Korea hard to finally agree to a suspension, officials said.
The original deal, reached shortly before Republicans took control of Congress, was fiercely attacked by conservatives, who argued the reactors could be diverted for military purposes. Some Clinton officials believed North Korea would collapse before the reactors were completed, and numerous deadlines were missed as the work proceeded slowly. When it came into power, the Bush administration was even less inclined to support the project.
Last October, after North Korea admitted having a secret nuclear project in violation of the 1994 agreement, the United States pressed allies to join it in suspending the fuel oil shipments. The United States also briefly seized a ship carrying North Korean missiles to Yemen. In response, North Korea evicted international weapons inspectors, restarted the Yongbyon reactor and pledged to build a nuclear arsenal.
-------- russia
Russian enriched uranium 'works for' the USA
Pravda.RU
2003-11-04
http://newsfromrussia.com/main/2003/11/04/51006.html
Russia plays an appreciable role on the nuclear fuel market in the United States, said Minister of Atomic Energy of the Russian Federation Alexander Rumyantsev.
"Fifty percent of enriched uranium for the needs of atomic energy in the USA are produced in and delivered from Russia," said Rumyantsev who gave a news conference in Washington.
According to the Russian minister, Russia delivers uranium to the United States under the bilateral Russian-American agreement on the use of highly enriched uranium extracted from nuclear weapons. Signed in 1993, the Agreement will be valid till 2013, and within its framework Russia annually supplies the United States with "uranium of an energetic quality" to the sum of $450 mln.
Russian-American cooperation in the nuclear sphere also includes a number of other promising trends. One of them is the deliveries to the USA of highly radioactive plutonium-38 which will be used by the American space industry for the creation of energy installations and batteries necessary for research stations and probes in super-range orbits or outside the solar system, said the Russian Minister of Atomic Energy.
Alexander Rumyantsev has arrived in the United States for a four-day working visit. He will conduct negotiations with US Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham, take part in the work of the first international exhibition of promising technologies from Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan which will open on Wednesday in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) and will also address the session of the First Committee of the UN General Assembly in New York.
----
Contracts Awarded to Replace Russian Reactors With Fossil-Fuel Plants
November 4, 2003
Arms Control Today
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2003_11/newsbriefs.asp#contractsawardedto
In another step toward shutting down Russia's three remaining reactors that produce weapons-grade plutonium, the U.S. Department of Energy Sept. 29 announced that the Russian company Rosatomstroi inked agreements with Washington Group International and Raytheon Technical Services to replace the existing facilities with plants that use fossil fuel. Plans for the U.S.-Russian cooperative project were announced in March 2003. (See ACT, April 2003.)
Under the agreement, worth $466 million, the companies will refurbish one existing plant to become a coal-fired heat and electricity facility and construct another one to replace the three reactors that provide heat and electricity to the closed cities of Seversk and Zheleznogorsk in Siberia. After the fossil-fuel plants are successfully brought online, the existing reactors will be shut down. According to plans outlined in May, the Seversk plant will be refurbished by Washington International Group and activated in 2008. Raytheon Technical Services is tasked with constructing the new plant in Zheleznogorsk. Officials are eyeing 2011 as the year the last of the three targeted Russian nuclear reactors will cease operation.
-------- treaties
Curbing Nuclear Proliferation
An Interview with Mohamed ElBaradei
Mohamed ElBaradei October 21, 2003
(November 4, 2003 Arms Control Today)
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2003_11/ElBaradei_11.asp
ACT: Obviously, it looks like there's been some good news this morning coming out of Tehran. I just wanted to get your reaction to Iran's announcement that it will allow IAEA inspections and suspend its uranium-enrichment activities.
ElBaradei: Yes, it's encouraging news...[but] I still need to be briefed on Iran's exact commitment. However, this is in line with their commitment to me last week that they are ready to come with a full declaration of all their past nuclear activities and they are ready to conclude a protocol to regulate their future nuclear activities.
And if the news today is correct that they are also ready to suspend, or apply a moratorium on, their enrichment activities as a confidence-building measure, as called [for] by the [the IAEA Board of Governors] in their decision last month, then I think this will open the way for hopefully a comprehensive settlement of the Iranian issues through verification and through political dialogue.
ACT: If this does play out in term of the details that you are hearing, would this address the fundamental concerns that the international community has about Iran's nuclear programs?
ElBaradei: Well, I think we still have to verify whatever declaration we will get and make sure that it is comprehensive and accurate. So, that would take care of the past activities. We then also need to have the protocol and make sure that all future activities in Iran would be under our verification. As you know, we never have 100 percent certainty. That's why we would like to have in Iran and everywhere else a continuous process of inspections, and we need the authority of the protocol to enable us in a country with an extensive knowledge and program to do a comprehensive job.
So yes, if we get a comprehensive declaration and we are able to verify that it is accurate and complete, and if we get the protocol and we are able to implement the protocol in all future activities in Iran, then I think this would be a leap forward in terms of the international community's concerns about Iran's nuclear program.
ACT: Have you discussed the latest talks at all with the [European] foreign ministers?
ElBaradei: I think I am going to have that...either tonight or tomorrow.
Export Controls for Nuclear Weapons Technology
ACT: Switching to another subject, we just read your very interesting article in the [October 16] Economist. You mention that the "sheer diversity of [nuclear] technology has made it harder to control both procurement and sales" of that technology. What steps would you suggest to alleviate this problem?
ElBaradei: You mean in terms of export control or overall?
ACT: Export control or any other steps we can take to deal with this diversity of technology that you mention.
ElBaradei: I think export control is obviously something where we need to continue to tighten the screws. It is becoming more and more difficult; a lot of these items are dual-use, but I think that one possibility is to obviously link arms export controls to the conclusion and implementation of additional protocols. I think it would be particularly good to see an item that could be used toward a nuclear activity that could only go to a country where the [IAEA] applied a comprehensive and in-depth verification through additional protocols. But export control is just one aspect of the problem and, as you saw in the recent Economist, there are lots of things that we need to do, concurrently if you like, because they reinforce each other.
ACT: Can you elaborate a little more on those? What sort of sequence do you envision, and what are the possibilities-political possibilities-of implementing those steps as well as the other suggestions that you made?
ElBaradei: Well, I think that the first thing, which is probably the easiest, is to make sure that countries that are parties of the NPT (nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty) have safeguard agreements and additional protocols enforced. I think the second step is to make sure that the export control regime is more inclusive, more transparent. The reporting requirements, for example, are shared. For the international community to be vigilant, for efforts to import items for weapons. Again, as I suggested, we need to look into whether the sensitive parts of the fuel cycle need to be multilateralized, such as enrichment and reprocessing activities. In other words, keep national control from weapons-usable material as far [away] as we can. I think that is a very important measure in the regime. To remove HEU (highly enriched uranium) or limit very much HEU and plutonium from the fuel cycle, and if it were to be used, again, it would be under multilateral control.
That will be a major step forward. That will take time, and we need to think about how to move in that direction. Then, obviously we need to continue-and that was not in my Economist piece-we need to continue to work on drivers or incentives for why countries work to acquire nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction. These are your standard reasons: instability, insecurity, festering disputes, deteriorating economic and social conditions in many parts of the world.
And again, obviously continue to work to delegitimize nuclear weapons. We continue to have nuclear weapons relied on as a weapon of choice. If that policy were to continue, we continue to have countries who are in a security bind, if you like, or perceive themselves to be in security bind to look for acquisition of nuclear weapons. So, we need to delegitimize the nuclear weapon, and by de-legitimizing...meaning trying to develop a different system of security that does not depend on nuclear deterrence. But also, we need at the same time to provide some system of inclusive security where countries do not feel that their security is threatened and they need to provide themselves a deterrent like the big boys. These are issues that we need to look at; they all reinforce each other. There is a relationship between all these measures.
I firmly believe that in the long run you cannot just continue to have the privileged few relying on either nuclear weapons or the nuclear weapons umbrella and others are told, "You cannot have nuclear weapons," because again we continue to have these failures. We continue to act as simply fire brigades, trying to put a fire out somewhere, and then we discover there is a fire erupting somewhere else. We need to change the whole nonproliferation security environment and with that also have a much more inclusive, comprehensive nonproliferation regime.
Changing the Nonproliferation Regime
ACT: You're calling for some significant changes. I guess you don't think that the nonproliferation regime is doing that very well right now. Is that fair to say? Would you characterize things that way?
ElBaradei: I think it is fair to say that it is under a great deal of stress, and if I am asking for significant changes, it is because the world is going through significant changes. A few years back, the terrorist phenomenon was not the major phenomenon we had to face. Efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction were not with the intensity we see in the last few years. The security threats are changing, and with it our response needs to change.
ACT: Now, the steps you called for-are these things the IAEA can implement on its own, or does this need political action by the member states?
ElBaradei: Well, I think we need...first of all, we need the realization by member states that the system we have right now is inadequate and needs to be improved. Once you have that, you know, sinking in, that feeling that you need to change the system, then I think we can move forward. Some of these measures, of course, we can do within the confines on the IAEA. That's basically the question of more comprehensive safeguards, more intrusive verifications, possibly multilateralizing the sensitive aspects of the fuel cycle.
Other parts, of course, have to be dealt with somewhere else, primarily in the United Nations- developing a better system of collective security or energizing the system of collective security, trying to intervene early in situations of threats of weapons of mass destruction or massive violation of human rights. So, it's between the agency, between the United Nations, between some of the regional organizations like the European Union, NATO. Everybody has to chip in, I think, and see how we can have a functioning system of collective security where we do not continue to face the threat of countries trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction or particularly nuclear weapons. Right now what we have is countries [having nuclear weapons] because of historical incidents. They developed them in the '50s and '60s or...that again, that was not meant to be the norm in the future. It was suppose to be a temporary situation. We need to bite the bullet and see how we can move beyond nuclear weapons deterrence, and I think that we have not done that yet.
ACT: Many critics argue that one weakness currently in the nonproliferation regime is that it allows states-parties to withdraw after acquiring the equipment necessary to develop fissile material. Do you have any recommendations for overcoming this problem?
ElBaradei: Well I think, again, the whole system needs to be linked to security. I mean, it is not...we should not and I see undue reliance on saying that countries are in the system and they need to comply. That's correct. But we also need two things. The system needs to continue to serve their security needs. You cannot expect them to continue to participate as a part of the system if their security is not being served. And the fact that they can withdraw from the treaty...I mean, that's true, but that doesn't mean that's the end of the road.
If you look, I think, in 1992, there was a Security Council meeting at the summit where they had heads of states and government. At that meeting, I think they issued a declaration saying that the proliferation of nuclear weapons-I think weapons of mass destruction-is a threat to international peace and security. What does that mean? That even if a country were to move out of the regime, and there are indications that they are developing weapons, the Security Council is going to come back after them. So yes, countries have a right to opt out of the regime if their supreme national interest, or what have you, is threatened, but that does not mean that the Security Council cannot come back after them-not because they walked out of the regime but because their situation is a threat to international peace and security.
If you want a treaty whereby there is no withdrawal whatsoever, you then have to have a universal treaty. That's what I am really arguing at the end of the day-that you have a regime which prohibits nuclear weapons, which is universally applied and which is regarded as a peremptory norm of international law, which means that whether you are in or out, you are bound by that regime. But we are still a long way from that because the regime that we have now is not universal: you have countries outside the regime, and even inside the regime are countries, that continue to have nuclear weapons. So under the present regime, countries need to keep this opting-out clause because they might be in a position or their security, as they say, might be threatened by a state, and they need to opt out.
It is clearly a weakness. But we need to deal with [that] short term by saying to those who want to walk out that walking out is not clearly justified or that the Security Council can in fact examine the situation and might come to a different conclusion. And in the long term, let's work for a universal regime where it is applied and there is no opting out.
Limiting Access to Nuclear Technology
ACT: I had a question about Article IV of the NPT, which was a chief incentive for countries to join the NPT and which provided for the sharing of peaceful nuclear technology. Given the concerns raised about the spread of dual-use nuclear technology, do you think that there is anything that can be done to provide countries with other incentives to belong to the nonproliferation regime? And if so, what would they be?
ElBaradei: To provide other incentives, you mean...
ACT: Yes, because Article IV is suppose to be an incentive, but it's caused a lot of concern about dual use [for both civilian and military applications] of technologies.
ElBaradei: Well, first of all, we now have everybody with the exception of India, Pakistan, and Israel, and I don't think these three countries are going to join by simply providing them an incentive, in terms of technology. They already themselves have the technology, in many ways, indigenously developed.
But on Article IV, I don't think Article IV is a problem. I think the problem under the NPT is that you can have the full gamut of fuel-cycle technologies, and that really is the problem. The concern is not that a country has a power reactor or a research reactor. The concern is that the country might have a reprocessing capability or an enrichment capability, which would enable it to develop nuclear weapon-usable material. And I think in the future one can think of having, in my view, possibly an additional protocol to the NPT, whereby you limit the right of-the individual right of-countries to have certain parts of the fuel cycle.
Again, I come back to the multilateralization of the fuel cycle. So, you can say "Article IV is applicable, we will give you the technology to use it for health, agriculture, medicine, radiotherapy, cancer treatment, water, you can have it for research reactors, you can have a power reactor. But if you need enriched uranium or you need to reprocess plutonium, that should not be under national control, it should be under international control or the very least some sort of multilateral process." You would continue to provide the technology, you would continue to give countries access to the technology, but you would restrict the parts of the fuel cycle that create the most concern, and these are, in my view, the reprocessing and enrichment and also, possibly, a final repository where you have spent fuel with plutonium in it.
Realizing Article VI Disarmament Commitments
ACT: Getting back to the question of nuclear weapons states and delegitimizing nuclear weapons, what do you think would be some of the most important near-term steps that nuclear weapons states could take toward meeting their Article VI disarmament obligations? ElBaradei: I think, to start, they need to have a major reduction in their existing arsenals. I read we still have something near 30,000 warheads in existence. That's absolutely unjustifiable by any scenario of nuclear deterrence. We can still have, I think, the nuclear weapon states can have major, major cuts in their nuclear arsenals to show their commitment toward-to show that they are serious in implementing their commitment under Article VI. We still have the CTBT (Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty), which has always been regarded as a key to the implementation of Article VI, unratified. We still have the FMCT (Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty), which would put a cap on fissile materials for weapons. We are not even able to agree on a method to negotiate for the last 10 years.
So, these are to me three clear indicators of the seriousness of the weapon states on moving forward implementing Article VI. Even the CTBT is not really the panacea because, as we know now, we can do a lot of testing through computer simulation and subcritical testing.
So, at the very minimum, at least we have a ban on nuclear testing, we have a ban on producing yet again additional material for weapons, and [we] try to move energetically on getting rid of many of the stockpiles that are still in existence; even if they are not operational, we still need to dispose of all the warheads. When we come to a situation where we have hundreds instead of the thousands we have, then we need obviously to take the second step, and that's what sort of alternative security regime we will have if we are to dispose completely of nuclear weapons.
But we are not even there yet because we are still far away from reaching this low threshold, which would force us at that time to think of the alternative system, although in my view we need to start thinking today of what kind of world we can have if we do not have nuclear weapons and how we can assure our security. We definitely need a reliable system of security, but a system that does not rely on nuclear weapons, and possibly more of an inclusive system that does not rely on unilateral or preemptive use of force but rooted primarily in the collective security system which we have under the UN Charter. If you have a collective system of security, then you need to develop. Again, the system you have now is almost dormant. You need to deal with the new threats. How do you deal with the possible cheats, even if you ban nuclear weapons? How do you deal with imminent threats of massive abuse of human rights, genocide? You need to have a collective system but also a collective system that is not paralyzed by veto or by [lack of] consensus-a collective system that is dynamic, that even in certain situations has to be preemptive. Given some of the risks right now, we cannot just wait until things happen. You need to take the initiative, and you need to be preemptive. But you need to be preemptive within a collective system and based on an international legitimacy.
ACT: Do you think the nuclear weapons states' stance on their Article VI commitments has influenced other countries' decisions maybe to lag in concluding additional protocols to their safeguards agreements?
ElBaradei: Yeah, I think some of the countries have been, frankly, grumbling that no progress on nuclear disarmament has made them rethink their obligations, the urgency of them concluding additional protocols. I heard that argument made here in the [IAEA] by a number of large and small non-nuclear weapons states: Why should we rush into an additional protocol if the weapon states are not energetically pursuing [the] Article VI process?
India, Israel, Pakistan
ACT: Turning to the outliers of the NPT-India, Israel, and Pakistan-they've obviously been a persistent concern for nonproliferation advocates. Do you think the NPT can survive without these countries' membership, and if they choose to stay outside the treaty, is there any progress that can be made short of getting them to sign up?
ElBaradei: I think the NPT can survive-has survived-without them. But I think, ultimately, that the nonproliferation regime will not survive without them. The NPT is a part of the regime, and if we talk about the regime-global, universal, enduring-then it will not survive without the three. Until we manage to bring them into the regime, I think we need to continue to start a dialogue with them. I for one believe that, rather than just trying to continue treating them as pariahs, we need to try and see how we can engage them as partners in an arms control process, maybe not necessarily under or within the framework of the NPT but within the framework of a larger arms control process.
As you probably know, they were supposed to be a part of the FMCT, they were supposed to be a part of the CTBT, [but] they haven't yet joined either of these. None of them have ratified the CTBT, and we don't yet have serious negotiations regarding the FMCT. I think we need to engage. I think the policy, right now in my view, the wise policy would be to engage these three countries and not just to continue to treat them as an outsider because, in the long run, we need to get everybody on board. And if we haven't succeeded to get them through the NPT, we need to think of other ways to get them on board.
North Korea
ACT: Turning to the question of North Korea, in the event that a settlement to this crisis is reached, what do you think needs to be done to verify a freeze or a dismantlement of the nuclear facilities, in terms of technical tools or a political agreement?
ElBaradei: Well, again we do not know what exactly they have right now. We need to go back in the country and do a proper verification. And I think we need at a minimum an additional protocol with the safeguards agreement and possibly some additional rights to ensure that we have a powerful system to detect every aspect of the nuclear program. I think we clearly need all the intelligence information that we can get. We need satellite imagery, which we now use almost as a routine. We need environmental sampling.
I think, with the new technology, the verification system is becoming much more powerful than, say, a decade ago. But we need the authority to apply that system, which means right of access, right of no-notice of inspection, right of getting all the information we need. So, I would say, at the minimum, I think we would need the additional protocol and possibly again, if we go back and discover that we need some additional authority, then we need to make North Korea understand that they should be as transparent as possible.
Again, if I can revert back to Iran for a second, I made the statement in the last couple of months that, you know, sometimes if you have a complex nuclear program that has not been subject to verification and you need to create credible assurance, you cannot just stick to the legal requirements of a safeguard agreement or protocol, but what you are really looking for is absolute comprehensive transparency by the country. If the country is cooperating, if they are claiming they have nothing to hide, they have every interest to work closely with us.
So, the short answer is yes, we need as much authority that we have-at the minimum, additional protocols-but expect that we might ask for an additional measures of transparency by North Korea if we are not able to resolve certain issues through simply [an] additional protocol or safeguard agreement.
ACT: Is there anything you can say about North Korea's uranium-enrichment program?
ElBaradei: Not really. You hear that they confess to having an enrichment program, you hear again that they have denied that they have an enrichment program. So, the only way to really get the facts is to go back and do verification. At this stage, I am not able to say with any degree of confidence whether they do or do not have a uranium-enrichment program.
ACT: Technically, as you know, it is much more difficult to verify a uranium-enrichment program. How confident are you that, if you did have access there, you would be able to verify whether or not they had a uranium-enrichment program?
ElBaradei: It's not easy because, as you said, uranium enrichment could be a very small facility and you cannot detect it through environmental sampling. But we will have to continue to rely on information, intelligence information, satellite monitoring, environmental sampling. But also I think the key to any verification process is to continue doing that. We will never, even after a year or two, be able to say, "We have 100 percent certainty." We don't have 100 percent certainty anywhere, and therefore the solution is to be there all the time, and I think North Korea will not be an exception. We will reach a point when we say, "Yes, we believe that we have no indication they have anything undeclared." But that's not sufficient. We need to continue to be there all the time, and as I said, if they are cooperative, cooperating with us, if they are showing transparency, then we have a higher degree of certainty, but in all situations, we need to be there all the time. Can I give 100 percent assurance? No, I can't, in Korea or anywhere else. The answer is that I am there all the time to be able to catch anything which we have not detected previously, and if a country were to be detected in noncompliance, then obviously...then the international community has to react and they have to react strongly to any breach or any violation.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), shared his perspective on a number of nonproliferation issues during an October 21 interview with Arms Control Today editor Miles Pomper and ACA research analyst Paul Kerr.
-------- un
Atomic Agency Chief Urges Global Controls on Nuclear Fuel
November 4, 2003
By KIRK SEMPLE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/04/international/asia/04NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 3 - The director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, citing the growing threat of nuclear terrorism, urged the United Nations on Monday to consider imposing multinational control over the production of nuclear material that could be used in weapons.
"Information and expertise on how to produce nuclear weapons has become much more accessible," the official, Mohamed ElBaradei, said in an address to the General Assembly. "This places extra emphasis on the importance of controlling access to weapon-usable nuclear material."
The proposal, if adopted, would amount to a major overhaul of the current nuclear regime, established by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which permits signers to handle their nuclear fuel under international inspection.
The treaty, which entered into force in 1970, was intended to limit the spread of nuclear technology and material. Nations that were not already nuclear powers agreed to refrain from developing nuclear weapons in return for help with their nuclear energy or nuclear medicine programs. At the time the treaty was negotiated, there was less concern that rogue states, terrorists groups and individuals might be able to obtain highly enriched uranium and plutonium, the crucial ingredients for nuclear weapons.
"Recent events have made it clear that the nonproliferation regime is under growing stress," Mr. ElBaradei warned. He pointed to the "serious and immediate challenge" posed by North Korea, which has pulled out of the nonproliferation treaty, and to the uncertainties about nuclear programs in Iran and Iraq.
One idea that may now be worth serious consideration is the advisability of limiting the processing of weapon-usable material by restricting it exclusively to facilities under multinational control, he said.
This new approach could also apply to "the management and disposal of spent fuel and radioactive waste," he said, adding that spent fuel is stockpiled and awaiting reprocessing in more than 50 countries.
The proposal could well rankle countries like Japan that have nuclear programs but insist they will not develop nuclear weapons and are not suspected of conducting secret programs. Japan has a nuclear fuel program and says it will not use it to make weapons.
It is not clear how Mr. ElBaradei's proposal would affect the five nations - the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China - with nuclear weapons programs that predated the treaty.
On the threat posed by North Korea, Mr. ElBaradei said that in the absence of inspections there, the agency cannot "provide any level of assurance about the nondiversion of nuclear material."
As for Iran, Mr. ElBaradei said he planned to report to the agency this month following current inspections there. Iran is under international pressure to prove that it is not building nuclear weapons.
At the General Assembly meeting on Monday, Iran's ambassador here, Javad Zarif, said Tehran would accept the terms of an additional protocol to the nonproliferation treaty that would permit surprise inspections.
Mr. ElBaradei, in his speech on Monday, also insisted that inspectors from his agency and the United Nations be permitted to return to Iraq "to provide ongoing assurance that activities related to weapons of mass destruction have not been resumed." Renewed inspections would "bring the weapons file to a closure," he said.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
U.S. Civilian Nuclear Reactor to Produce Weapons Material
November 4, 2003
Arms Control Today
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2003_11/newsbriefs.asp#USciviliannuclear
In a break from decades-long U.S. policy, a civilian nuclear power reactor will generate power (for homes and businesses) while producing materials for nuclear weapons. The Watts Bar Nuclear Station, operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), returned to operation Oct. 20, equipped with rods that will allow TVA to produce tritium for the Department of Energy.
Workers began inserting tritium-producing burnable absorber rods at Watts Bar in early September. The rods will be removed in 18 months at the end of the reactor's normal fuel cycle. The Energy Department will then send these bars to a tritium-extraction facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
Tritium is a short-lived isotope of hydrogen used to boost the yield of nuclear weapons. Its half-life of 12 years requires that the material be replenished and regularly replaced in nuclear weapons. Renewed production at Watts Bar will allow the Energy Department to avoid tapping into its five-year tritium reserve, which it would otherwise be expected to do sometime in 2005. The U.S. government has not made tritium since 1988, when it stopped production at its Savannah River Site due to operational and safety problems. Since then, the United States has recycled tritium from dismantled nuclear weapons to meet its stockpile requirements.
The Energy Department chose to produce tritium in a commercial reactor despite criticism that such action would blur the distinction between nuclear technology used for civilian and military purposes and undermine the credibility of U.S. nonproliferation policies. However, the Energy Department determined that using commercial reactors would be more flexible and cost-effective than the alternative construction of a new reactor dedicated to tritium production. Last year, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved requests to allow tritium production at TVA's Watts Bar and Sequoyah nuclear power facilities. (See ACT, November 2002.)
However, John Moulton, a TVA spokesman, said that there were "no plans at this time" to begin tritium production at the Sequoyah facility, although he acknowledged that the Sequoyah reactors remain in "standby phase" for future production of the material.
----
Defense Science Board Calls for New Nuclear Weapons Capabilities
November 4, 2003
Arms Control Today
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2003_11/newsbriefs.asp#defensescienceboard
The Defense Science Board (DSB) is recommending that the United States scale back its current reserve nuclear weapons stockpile and develop lower-yield nuclear weapons that cause less collateral damage. The recommendation is contained in a yet-to-be-released study completed this summer and first reported by Jane's Defence Weekly Oct. 22. The board is a civilian panel charged with advising defense leaders on scientific and technological matters.
According to documents obtained by Arms Control Today, the study entitled "Future Strategic Strike Forces" suggests that the U.S. arsenal does not meet current and future threat requirements. The board cites a "different, more complex threat environment" that may not be appropriate for the "legacy weapons" that the Department of Energy maintains. The stockpile stewardship program, which may cost up to $6.4 billion in fiscal year 2004, according to the president's budget request, uses science-based programs to ensure the safety and reliability of U.S nuclear weapons without using explosive testing.
Calling for a "strategic redirection" of stockpile stewardship priorities, the report recommends scaling back weapons life-extension programs in favor of focusing on a "more relevant" nuclear weapons stockpile. According to the study, a future nuclear stockpile should contain weapons that have "great precision, deep penetration, [and] greatly reduced radioactivity" as well as special electromagnetic pulse and neutron bombs, "all with reduced fission yield." The board also recommends streamlining the nuclear weapons complex to be "agile and responsive" to meet the new needs of the U.S. arsenal. In addition, the study suggests reducing the nondeployed stockpile in line with the U.S. nuclear posture.
Many of the DSB's recommendations fall in line with current U.S. priorities as outlined in the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review and reinforced in the Bush administration's fiscal year 2004 budget request. As part of the new "capabilities-based" approach touted in the review, the Departments of Defense and Energy are currently studying whether an existing nuclear design can be modified to destroy hardened and deeply buried targets, and defense officials are seeking permission to research a low-yield nuclear weapon. In addition, the Energy Department requested funding to compress the preparation time for a nuclear weapons test so that it can be executed in 18 months or less. (See ACT, March 2003.)
The DSB study also suggests expanding response capabilities to include new non-nuclear options. Broadening the number of non-nuclear options may reduce dependence on nuclear capabilities, sources told Jane's Defence Weekly. The DSB recommends developing new options such as earth-penetrating weapons using conventionally armed ballistic missiles, microwave weapons, and high-energy lasers.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- kentucky
Agency sued over cleanup at nuclear plant
By JAMES MALONE jmalone@courier-journal.com
The Louisville, KY Courier-Journal
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2003/11/04ky/met-4-suit1104-4788.html
Three families living near the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant have filed a lawsuit in Franklin Circuit Court that asks a judge to set aside two orders the Kentucky Natural Resources Cabinet signed with the U.S. Department of Energy to resolve a number of hazardous-waste violations at the 50-year-old uranium-enrichment plant.
Signed Oct.2, the orders called for the federal government to pay a $1million fine to resolve state citations for illegal disposal and storage of hazardous waste in three landfills, several unpermitted storage areas, and in 5,100 drums.
"We basically thought they were giving the cleanup away," said Ronald Lamb, one of the plaintiffs and a businessman who lives in rural Kevil, near the plant. "The state made a deal behind closed doors and let them off the hook."
Kerry Holt, a state spokeswoman, said the cabinet had not seen the lawsuit filed yesterday and had no comment on it.
Joe Davis, an Energy Department spokesman in Washington, said the federal agency also had no comment because it hadn't seen the lawsuit. Davis said the agency reached an agreement with Kentucky and wants to move forward with cleaning up the greatest risks at the plant.
Lamb and two other people, Al Puckett of Kevil and Mark Donham of Brookport, Ill., allege that the so-called "agreed orders" were unconstitutional and that the releases of hazardous waste into the environment might harm their properties.
They contend that the orders: impose a "consultation process" that allows the Energy Department to defer taking action; allow the department to revise conditions for managing 34,000 cylinders at the plant containing depleted uranium; allow the department to claim financial inability to comply with state environmental laws and regulations; and allow the closure of sanitary landfills containing hazardous waste.
A key provision in the agreement is that responsibility falls on the cabinet to prove with substantial evidence that the Energy Department is the source of groundwater pollutants, rather than in the past when the government has acknowledged it was the source of contaminants, said Tom FitzGerald, a public-interest attorney who is representing the plaintiffs and is director of the Kentucky Resources Council environmental group.
FitzGerald said he had never seen some of the provisions and concessions to a waste generator that Kentucky offered the Energy Department.
He said he didn't know how the lawsuit might affect the cleanup.
"There needs to be a whole lot more daylight ... on the agreement," FitzGerald said. "There was no public notice and no public comment taken on it."
By signing the orders, Kentucky regulators cleared the way for about $30million in additional federal money to be allocated to complete most of the Paducah cleanup by 2019.
Years of Cold War weapons production at the Paducah plant resulted in the discharge of solvents, heavy metals and radioactive isotopes into the air, soil and water around the plant.
The cleanup, begun a decade ago, is expected to cost more than $5billion.
Kentucky, meantime, is competing with Ohio for a new uranium-enrichment plant using a different technology. The plant is projected to cost about $1.5billion and will be built by the United States Enrichment Corp., which leases the Paducah plant from the federal government to produce fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.
-------- ohio
AEP applies to NRC to relicense Ohio Cook plant
REUTERS USA:
November 4, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/22747/story.htm
NEW YORK - American Electric Power Co Inc. (AEP.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said Monday it applied to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to renew operating licenses at its Cook nuclear plant.
AEP asserted in its application, consisting of over 1,400 pages of documentation and associated technical analysis, that the 1,035 megawatt Cook Unit 1 and 1,090 MW Unit 2 can be safely operated until 2034 and 2037 respectively.
"Relicensing provides us the flexibility of up to 20 years of additional operation for Cook and will maintain a diverse energy supply, provide environmental balance and keep a major source of jobs and tax revenue in the community," said Mano Nazar, AEP senior vice president and chief nuclear officer in a statement.
The Cook units are currently licensed by the NRC until 2014 and 2017.
The license renewal process requires both a technical review of equipment important to safety and an environmental review.
Typical NRC review of a nuclear plant license renewal application takes 22 to 30 months. The NRC will hold public meetings on the license renewal process and Cook's Environmental Impact Statement.
Cook is a dual-unit nuclear site with a total generating capacity of 2,150 megawatts.
AEP, of Columbus, Ohio, owns more than 42,000 MW of generating capacity in the United States and in international markets and is one of the largest electric utilities in the United States, with almost 5 million customers linked to its 11-state electric transmission and distribution grid.
-------- vermont
Groups to petition against VY uprate
By TOBY HENRY
Brattleboro Reformer Staff
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
http://www.reformer.com/Stories/0,1413,102~8862~1743158,00.html
BRATTLEBORO -- Two local anti-nuclear power groups plan to present a petition bearing nearly 3,000 signatures calling for an independent safety assessment of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant to Gov. James Douglas this week.
"It's not about being pro- or anti-(nuclear power), this is (to determine) if the plant is as safe as they say it is," said Westminster resident Magdaline Volaitis, a member of Nuclear Free Vermont. "The 'uprate' makes it paramount that the plant should be looked at from top to bottom."
The petition, sponsored by Nuclear Free Vermont and the New England Coalition, calls for an review of the plant that will "assess the conformance of Vermont Yankee to its design and licensing bases, including appropriate reviews at the site and corporate office." The petition also calls for the assessment to analyze "operational safety factors, giving risk perspectives where appropriate" and to "determine the root causes of significant safety findings and draw conclusions on overall performance."
According to a press release, Nuclear Free Vermont and the New England Coalition plan to present the petition to Douglas on Thursday afternoon at his office in the Capitol. Jane Southworth, the coalition's office manager, said on Tuesday that it was not yet clear if the petition, signed by about 2,700 people, would be presented to the governor or a member of his staff.
Out of approximately 2,700 names on the petition, Southworth said that about 2,400 of the people are from Vermont, although not all are from Windham County. Several hundred other signers of the petition reside in New York, Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts or Rhode Island, and at least a few of the other signatures are from foreign countries. The signatures have been collected over the past six weeks, she said.
Since Yankee owner Entergy first proposed the uprate -- a plan to boost the 540-megawatt plant's power output by 20 percent -- back in February, critics of nuclear power have stated that they feel the power increase will be too much for the 31-year-old plant. Responding, Yankee officials have maintained that their plant is well-run and can handle the increased load. Rob Williams, plant spokesman, said on Monday that the impending review by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in addition to an independent review of the commission's findings by the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, is sufficient to address any concerns about safety that may arise in light of the uprate.
"I think (the uprate) is like putting in a whole new nuclear plant," Southworth said. "(Entergy) keeps talking about how safe the plant is -- so let them go over it with a fine-toothed comb and find out."
In earlier discussions with the Vermont Public Service Board, Yankee site vice president Jay Thayer unequivocally agreed with having the request for an independent safety review of the plant be required as part of the board's uprate approval. A decision from the board on the uprate is expected in mid-March. Yankee submitted its uprate petition to the NRC earlier this fall and the review is expected to take place within a year.
"As we have said, we're confident of the plant design, condition and in the way we operate it," said Williams. "We agree with the Vermont Department of Public Service, the ratepayer advocates, that the NRC reviews of the uprate are appropriately thorough."
Williams said that the reviews by the NRC and ACRS examine many aspects of the plant, including structural, electrical, safety and engineering components, in addition to "the operational changes that will be put in place" in order to accommodate the uprate.
"The entire process will take about a year, and in that time, we will be participating in meetings with the NRC and will respond to their requests for additional information," Williams said.
But coalition vice-president Diana Sidebotham, who helped in co-founding the group in 1971, said that she worries about the completeness of the impending review by the NRC. What concerned residents are seeking, she said, is a full-scale review along the lines of the one performed for Maine Yankee in 1996.
In summer of that year, the 860-megawatt plant located in Wiscasset on Montskeag Bay was subject to an NRC review that found 16 safety violations. After considering the economic factors involved in maintenance and repairs, the plant's board of directors announced the decision in May 1997 to close the plant. A full decommission of the plant is expected in 2005; the plant was originally scheduled to operate until 2008.
In the joint petition, Nuclear Free Vermont and the coalition call for the Vermont Yankee assessment to be conducted "according to the terms and parameters" of the NRC's 1996 review of Maine Yankee. Sidebotham said that the assessment could have the added benefit of updating the baseline for Yankee's safety standards.
-------- us politics
US will deny aid to countries that refuse court immunity deals
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
04 November 2003
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=460255
The United States aims to secure agreements "with every country in the world" guaranteeing immunity for its citizens from any prosecution from the new International Criminal Court (ICC), and will cut off military aid to countries which do not comply.
In an uncompromising defence of Washington's decision to shun the court, Under Secretary of State John Bolton announced yesterday that the US has already reached so-called Article 98 exemption agreements, under the Rome statutes setting up the ICC, with 70 countries; 50 of them among the ICC's 90 signatories.
Speaking at the conservative thinktank, the American Enterprise Institute, Mr Bolton also accused the European Union of imposing an "unfair choice" on aspirant members by insisting they do nothing to weaken the authority of the ICC. This made it harder for these countries to reach exemption deals with the US, he complained.
The White House's total rejection of the court, announced soon after it took office in 2001, fuelled some of the first criticism of the Bush administration as unilateralist and scornful of international pacts. The language of Mr Bolton, in-house 'neo-conservative' hawk at the State Department, will only sharpen such complaints. He lambasted the "intolerable" authority of the court, with its "unaccountable prosecutors and unchecked judicial powers" which represented a "macro-constitutional" issue for the US. More clearly than ever before, Mr Bolton indicated that Washington's biggest objection is not to the risk that the court poses to American soldiers, diplomats and other officials, but that it would encourage attempts to prosecute top figures in US government, past and present, for war crimes.
He cited the efforts in Belgium - since abandoned - to level charges against President Bush and military and civilian leaders at the Pentagon over Iraq. "Launching criminal investigations can have enormous political implications," Mr Bolton said.
Washington's favoured retaliation is to sever military aid to countries which refuse to grant Article 98 exemptions.
The Act has been rigidly applied by the Bush administration, even to close allies who have contributed to the American-led occupation of Iraq.
----
Perle warns Germany: stop backing France
Nov 4, 2003
(AFP)
http://www.expatica.com/france.asp?pad=278,313,&item_id=35505
BERLIN - Senior US defence adviser Richard Perle urged Germany Tuesday to stop following France on the international political stage and said that the Franco-German relationship is harming ties with the United States.
"The idea that Germany must submit to French ideas has to be looked at," Perle told about 200 defence experts gathered in Berlin for a two-day security conference.
Perle said the depth of the Franco-German partnership was, at times, further damaging the European Union's already strained relations with Washington.
"There is such a strong tendency for France and Germany on every occasion to express solidarity, I think in the mistaken belief that somehow that is what is essential to peace in Europe..., that it can obscure the really very difficult issue of Europe and the Atlantic," he said.
In a heated exchange, former French chief of staff, Admiral Jacques Lanxade, accused Perle of trying to divide Paris and Berlin and blamed the Pentagon adviser for inciting public ill-feeling in Europe towards Washington.
----
Senate Approves $87 Billion For Iraq
Bush Gets Package Largely as Requested
By Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 4, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59669-2003Nov3?language=printer
The Senate gave final congressional approval yesterday to an $87.5 billion spending package for military and reconstruction operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, giving President Bush nearly all he wanted despite some lawmakers' earlier demands for changes.
The bill, one of the largest military and foreign aid spending measures in U.S. history, will go to the president for his signature. The House had approved it, 298 to 121, early Friday.
The spending package had stirred spirited debates on whether Iraq should be forced to repay some of the money -- a notion the Senate embraced last month, only to have a House-Senate conference strike it. The measure won final passage yesterday on a rather anticlimactic voice vote, with few senators present and without the usual roll call that puts each lawmaker on record as supporting or opposing a measure.
The decision to skip a recorded vote underscored the political dilemma for many senators who want to support U.S. troops but have strong misgivings about Bush's postwar policies in Iraq.
Senate passage came a day after U.S. forces suffered their worst postwar casualties in Iraq. Nineteen Americans were killed Sunday, including 16 troops who died when a missile hit a transport helicopter west of Baghdad.
Some senators cited the mounting casualties as evidence of the failure of current policies and the need for more international support. Others contended the dangers reinforced the need for a sustained effort to bring stability to Iraq.
The bill, largely following the contours of Bush's request in early September, provides $64.7 billion for military operations in Iraq, in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Of that total, $51 billion would go to support operations in Iraq and $10 billion for Afghanistan.
In its major departure from Bush's request, the legislation provides $18.6 billion -- or $1.7 billion less than he requested -- for rebuilding efforts in Iraq, including health facilities, power and water supplies, and police training. Another $1.2 billion is set aside for reconstruction in Afghanistan, along with additional amounts for Pakistan, Jordan and other supportive countries in the region.
Lawmakers dropped several of Bush's requests for Iraq rebuilding that they regarded as unnecessary, including funds for Zip codes, telephone area codes, trash trucks, housing projects and two $50,000-a-bed prisons.
Bush won his biggest victory when Senate negotiators agreed with their House counterparts last week to drop a Senate-approved provision that would have required half of the reconstruction money to be loans rather than grants. The White House had threatened a veto if the loan provision were included in the final bill. The bill now provides all the money in grants that do not need to be repaid.
The president said in a statement: "I commend Congress for providing vital funds to support our mission and our troops deployed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. These resources, coupled with the growing assistance of international donors, will provide essential support to make Iraq more secure and to help the Iraqi people transition to self-government. The funds will also enable us to continue our efforts to help Afghanistan become a peaceful, democratic, and prosperous nation that contributes to regional stability."
Most of the legislation's money would be spent during the current fiscal year, which ends next September, although some is to be spread out over a longer period.
It is the second major special funding bill for Iraq that Congress has passed at Bush's request this year. Lawmakers in April approved a $79 billion package that included $62 billion for the war, which had just begun against Saddam Hussein's government.
The Senate set aside most of the day for debate on the measure, but relatively few senators spoke. Their speeches generally echoed arguments made earlier about the postwar operations and the legislation to fund it.
"As the president has said time and time again, we will not walk away from Iraq . . . and create a vacuum for terrorists to fill," said Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska). "This appropriations bill will enable us to fulfill our responsibilities to our men and women in uniform and the people of Iraq and Afghanistan."
Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), ranking minority member of the appropriations panel, disagreed. The bill "and the policy which it supports, unfortunately may prove to be a Pyrrhic victory for the Bush administration," he said. Byrd called it "a flawed agreement that was produced by political imperative, not by reasoned policy considerations."
Some senators continued to complain that Iraq will not have to pay back any reconstruction costs, especially in light of U.S. budget deficits. "Instead of asking Iraq to borrow against its bountiful oil reserves, we are asking our children and grandchildren to continue to borrow to build Iraq," said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.).
Byrd was the only senator who could be heard saying "no" when the vote was called.
The bill will expand health care coverage, which now is available to the regular armed forces, so that it includes members of the National Guard and reserves who lack such coverage in civilian life. But it dropped a Senate proposal to increase funding for veterans' health care.
It includes several provisions aimed at assuring that the funds are spent properly, including creation of the post of inspector general for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which is overseeing the occupation of Iraq. But it does not include a proposal to require the new official to testify before Congress.
It includes provisions aimed at encouraging competitive bidding for reconstruction contracts in Iraq, but not a Senate proposal that would have imposed criminal penalties for profiteering.
In addition to the military and foreign aid funding, the legislation includes $500 million to replenish federal coffers for unanticipated domestic costs, including the government's response to the California wildfires, Hurricane Isabel and other disasters.
-------
CONGRESS
Senate Sends Spending Bill for War Costs to President
November 4, 2003
New York Times
By DAVID FIRESTONE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/04/politics/04COST.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 3 - The Senate gave its final approval on Monday to President Bush's request for $87.5 billion to occupy and rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan, completing Congressional action on the largest emergency spending bill ever sought by a president.
The Senate's action came on a voice vote with only six members present, meaning that the decisions of individual members on the administration's vision for Iraq were not recorded. Not voting on the record appealed to both Republicans nervous about explaining the amount to their constituents, and Democrats who did not want their patriotism questioned for opposing the bill. On Friday, the House voted 298 to 121 in favor of the bill. The bill now goes to the president for his signature.
Senator Robert C. Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat who has been the loudest Congressional challenger of the administration's Iraq policy, was the lone voice shouting no during the vote, a contrast to the 12 senators who opposed the emergency spending bill, known as a supplemental, in a preliminary vote last month.
The misgivings raised by members of both parties to the size of the price tag and the nation's dominance over Iraq's future were swept away by the administration's ability to frame the vote as a test of support for American troops, and for the global campaign against terrorism.
"This supplemental will provide the equipment, fuel, ammunition and pay our forces need and deserve as they continue their tasks in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in the other locations where they continue to stand in harm's way fighting the global war on terrorism," said Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, who shepherded the bill through the Senate as chairman of the Appropriations Committee.
In a statement issued by the White House on Monday night, Mr. Bush said, "The strong bipartisan show of support for this bill underscores that America and the world are united to prevail in the central front in the war on terror by helping build a peaceful, democratic and prosperous Iraq."
But the continuing deaths among those troops hung heavily over the last hours of debate. Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and an opponent of the war, noted that the helicopter pilot killed on Sunday was a member of the Illinois Air Guard and said the deaths were the real costs of the war and the administration's miscalculations.
Even supporters said the continuing toll of casualties made it hard for them to explain their vote to skeptical constituents back home.
"It is not easy to stay the course when our American troops are dying and getting wounded," said Senator Susan M. Collins, Republican of Maine. "But to walk away from Iraq now would hand the terrorists a victory." Ms. Collins and several other senators said they would have been far more enthusiastic about the bill if it had contained a proposal approved earlier by the Senate that would have provided Iraq up to $10 billion in loans, rather than grants. That provision was removed last week at the insistence of the White House.
The final size of the bill was $87,543,098,000, an amount larger than the annual budgets of seven cabinet departments. All the money will be added to the year's record budget deficit. The bulk of the bill - $65.7 billion - will pay for the military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, with $24 billion alone going for Army operations and $10 billion earmarked for Afghanistan. Congress agreed to give $983 million for the operating expenses of the American authority in Iraq, and added to the president's request for $500 million for aid to victims of the California wildfires and Hurricane Isabel.
The most contentious part of the bill was the $20.3 billion requested by the president for rebuilding Iraq. Although the president won the larger battle, preventing Iraq from having to repay any of that money to the United States, he was forced to accept a $1.6 billion cut in the total amount of aid after scores of lawmakers objected to projects they considered unnecessary.
The flag bearers of the debate were Mr. Stevens and Mr. Byrd, the two longest-serving members of their parties, who gave the diametrically opposed last words as Congress opened its purse.
"The $87 billion in this appropriations bill provides the wherewithal for the United States to stay the course in Iraq, when what we badly need is a course correction," Mr. Byrd said. "The president owes the American people an exit strategy for Iraq, and it is time for him to deliver."
But Mr. Stevens said the bill demonstrated the nation's resolve to fight terrorists wherever they gather. "We will not walk away from Iraq," he said. "We will not withdraw our forces from Iraq. We will not leave the Iraqi people in chaos."
----
Lawmaker Steps Back From Letter to Bush
Nov 4, 2003
(AP)
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CONGRESS_NORTH_KOREA?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
WASHINGTON -- A House member is separating himself from a strongly worded letter criticizing the Bush administration for canceling a congressional trip to North Korea.
Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., had not read the entire 5 1/2-page letter to President Bush before he signed it, said his spokesman, Wesley Denton. After reading the full letter he asked that his name be removed.
"He didn't agree with the tone of the letter," Denton said Tuesday.
The letter, signed by 10 lawmakers including Wilson, complained of "arrogant and disrespectful" treatment they had received from Bush's national security team. The White House withdrew support for the trip shortly before the lawmakers' planned departure last month.
Wilson sent a more delicately worded letter to Bush on Thursday asking that the delegation be allowed to go ahead and undertake the trip. He said he believed the delegation, led by Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., would complement the administration's efforts to ease nuclear tensions with North Korea.
In canceling the trip, the White House noted it is working with other nations to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear program and said any bilateral delegation would be inappropriate.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Proposed Afghan Constitution Fits U.S. Model
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, November 4, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57184-2003Nov3.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 3 -- The Afghan government unveiled its long-awaited proposal for a new constitution Monday, one that opts for a strong presidential system and drops the position of prime minister that had initially been recommended by a constitutional advisory commission.
The new draft, presented in a formal ceremony outside the presidential palace after weeks of private discussion among top officials, appeared to signify a major political victory for President Hamid Karzai, who hopes to win election next year to the post he now holds temporarily as the country's transitional leader.
But the final word on the new charter, and on the form of Afghanistan's eventual government, will come from 500 delegates to a national assembly, scheduled for mid-December, who will debate and ratify the document in preparation for national elections. The entire process is mandated and monitored by the United Nations.
"Today we have witnessed a significant step in taking the Afghan nation toward building a society ruled by law," Jawid Luddin, Karzai's spokesman, told reporters after the ceremony, which was attended by the ailing former Afghan king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, two former presidents and many foreign ambassadors.
The official draft calls for a president and vice president to be elected, with a separate two-house legislature and judiciary. It also states that "no law can be contrary to the sacred religion of Islam" but stops short of calling for full Islamic law to be implemented, which some conservative Muslim leaders had sought.
Luddin said the decision to opt for a strong executive, rather than a combined system with both a president and prime minister, was made in the interests of political stability and suitability for the country, which recently emerged from more than two decades of violent conflict and extreme ideological swings between communist and Islamic rule.
"For a parliamentary system, you need to have a strong tradition of democracy and strong political parties," he said. "The most important thing Afghanistan needs now is stability."
Some foreign advisers to the constitutional process said officials were keen to avoid the kind of ruinous power struggle that erupted in the early 1990s, when the Afghan government was split between a president and a powerful prime minister. But some critics expressed concern that the proposed system would concentrate too much power in the president's hands.
"Most people we talked to wanted a parliamentary system or at least a mixed one, because it would put democracy much more in action," said Ashraf Rassooli, a member of the constitutional commission. Under the new draft, he said, "the president is directly elected by the people and he is not responsible to parliament. They cannot really challenge him."
Alex Thier of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based agency that monitors Afghan developments, said that opting for a U.S.-style system in new democracies "tends to promote autocracy." Eventually, he said, Afghanistan will have to face the issue of ethnic and political power-sharing, which has been repeatedly shunted aside during the last two years.
It was not immediately clear whether Karzai had imposed his will or reached a private agreement with his opponents in the government -- leaders of the former Northern Alliance of armed Islamic political factions -- who presumably would prefer a system in which one of them would become prime minister.
In late September, the 35-member constitutional commission submitted to Karzai for review a draft of the constitution that included a position for a prime minister. According to informed observers, Karzai and a variety of senior officials spent the last month in intense debate. Some observers said the idea of a prime minister was dropped because there was no agreement on exactly how much power and responsibility the position would carry.
Others said the change reflected a growing split within the Northern Alliance, in which some leading figures sought the position of prime minister, while others, including Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim, concluded that their personal and factional interests would be better served by seeking the vice presidency.
"It may seem on the outside like Karzai was pushing hard for this change, but there was no backroom deal. In the end, what everyone was most worried about was the possibility of a split executive," said a foreign adviser. "There was a strong feeling among the experts that it had to be clear who was the boss on all the important issues."
Official sources said Karzai had hoped to delay making the proposed charter public until just before the constitutional assembly, or loya jirga, in December, but the government has been under sustained pressure to release the draft ever since it was completed by the constitutional commission.
During the ceremony Monday, the commission chairman, Vice President Nematollah Shahrani, announced that the public was now welcome to express its views on the proposal, and that afterward the commission would present yet another final draft for the assembly to debate. No structure has been set up to field public response, however, and officials do not expect major changes to be made.
-------- africa
Uganda president: Poor nations help rich
November 04, 2003
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20031103-075109-2279r.htm
UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 3 -- Uganda President Yoweri Museveni says African countries are donors of money, taxes and jobs to the developed world.
Museveni told a U.N. General Assembly meeting on commodities and raw materials the only way for African nations to stop donating to the richer countries was to process their raw materials and add value to them through a "transformation" of their economies.
Taking the example of raw cotton grown in Uganda, and tracing the process to suits, such as the one he was wearing, he said that Uganda winds up donating resources to the developed countries.
He said Uganda gets about $1.30 a kilogram for the raw cotton: "But, if I do the spinning,k the value goes up three times. If you weave that cotton the value goes up six times. If you produce the garment the value goes up ten times."
-------- arms
Asian and Pacific Leaders Pledge to Control Shoulder-Fired Missiles
November 4, 2003
Arms Control Today
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2003_11/newsbriefs.asp#asianandpacific
Leaders of countries from Asia to the Western Hemisphere pledged Oct. 21 to better control the international trade in shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles that could be used by terrorists against civilian and commercial aircraft.
Promoted by the United States, the nonbinding pledge came at the end of a two-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Bangkok, Thailand. APEC's 21 members include China, Japan, and Russia, all three of which produce shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles, collectively referred to as Man-Portable Air Defense Systems (MANPADS). The United States also manufactures and exports MANPADS.
APEC members stated they would strengthen national controls on producing and exporting MANPADS and better protect their stockpiles against theft. They further agreed not to sell these types of missiles to nonstate actors.
The Group of Eight (G-8) issued a similar statement this past June and the 33-member Wassenaar Arrangement adopted criteria to guide MANPADS controls and exports in December 2000. Wassenaar members, which include most major arms suppliers, agreed to sell MANPADS only to governments or their licensed agents. China is not a member of either the G-8 or the Wassenaar Arrangement.
The threat posed by MANPADS has gained greater prominence following a failed November 2002 attempt in Kenya to shoot down an Israeli commercial airliner and a high-profile sting operation this past August to arrest an arms dealer selling a Russian-made shoulder-fired missile in New York City.
Washington has been trying to draw attention to the problem for several years. In June 1998, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called for the negotiation of an international agreement to "place tighter controls on the export of these portable, easily concealed weapons." At that time, the Department of State reported that "more than 115 countries and dozens of subnational groups" possessed MANPADS.
-------- asia
Thaksin faces storm over status as upgraded US ally
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
Manila Times -- Inter Press Service
http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2003/nov/04/opinion/20031104opi6.html
WILL Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra get away in his new role as a standard-bearer for US military ambitions in the region?
That question is gaining currency after Thaksin earned a new military stripe for his country-being designated a major non-NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) ally of the United States by US President George W. Bush.
For some of Thaksin's critics, it is a deal that could well lay the foundation for Bangkok being transformed into Washington's stooge as the US government prosecutes its war against terrorism. By making bold their concerns, these voices-beginning with nongovernmental groups, followed by commentators in the newspapers and now sections of the political class-also imply that the Thaksin administration may soon have to battle a political storm in the weeks ahead.
Last Wednesday, the Thai Senate offered a typical example, when it questioned two senior government officials, Foreign Affairs Minister Surakiart Sathira-thai and Defense Minister Tham-marak Issarangkul, about the precise gains that awaited the country from this new military deal.
"Surakiart said the deal was a unilateral offer from the United States to Thailand and that Thailand had nothing to lose," a member of the Senate's committee on foreign affairs who sat through the inquiry told IPS. "They also defended Thailand's support on the war against terrorism, and also the decision to send Thai troops to Iraq."
That view was in keeping with the stance the foreign ministry took to counter the early sniping that Bangkok had erred on this deal with the Bush administration. Becoming a non-NATO ally of the US government will not lead to Washington setting up military bases in Thailand, a ministry official was quoted as having told The Nation, a local daily.
Besides Thailand, the other countries in this exclusive military club are Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. Among the more known features of such an alliance are member countries developing closer military ties, having an inside track to receive defense equipment and the ability to purchase depleted uranium antitank rounds.
"Many senators are worried that this arrangement with the US will compromise our position as a country committed to a multilateral than a unilateral approach to security matters," Kraisak Choon-havan, chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, told IPS. "We have reservations and we have cautioned the government."
The opposition Democrat Party is also sharpening its knives. "It appears as if the government has not thought through the wider picture about how this deal will affect Thailand's status internationally," party parliamentarian Abhisit Vejjajiva said during an interview.
"This may impact our record of being neutral on foreign policy issues," he added. "The public needs to know more, because the gains from this deal may be exaggerated."
Prior to this military deal, there were other clues indicating that Bangkok was happy to curry favor with the United States, which has declared Southeast Asia as the second front in its war against terrorism.
Among them were Thai intelligence officials working in tandem with US sleuths to arrest Riduan Isamuddin, or Hambali, an Indonesian Muslim, in August. He was wanted for his alleged involvement in a string of deadly bomb attacks and his links with a regional terror network of Islamic extremists.
What has also triggered Thai concern over the new US alliance is the record left by the Washington during its last military adventure in this region: the Vietnam War. The US government converted Thailand into a major military outpost during its onslaught on Indo-China in the 1960s, including building airfields, constructing a deep-water port and setting up camps.
"Between 1965 and 1968, three-quarters of all the bomb tonnage dropped on North Vietnam and Laos was flown out of the Thai bases," write Pasuk Phongpaichit and Chris Baker in their book, Thailand-Economy and Politics.
"The Thai government secretly opened the door for the US to station troops," they note, adding that by 1969 there were over 45,000 US military personnel in the country.
Thailand's image was badly tarnished as a result, and this still haunts the country, says Withaya Sucharithanarugse, an analyst at the Institute of Asian Studies at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University. "Only the ruling political class and some businessmen benefited."
"There was a sense that we had lost our dignity, our sovereignty and our independence to the US," he explained during an interview.
But according to Kraisak, the senator, both the US embassy in Bangkok and the Thaksin administration have dismissed the suggestion that the new turn in Thai-US relations could lead to a Vietnam parallel.
Yet what cannot be ignored is the implication of this turn in Thailand's foreign policy, particularly when viewed against the message that was broadcast after Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai) party swept into power with a thumping majority at the beginning of 2001.
The prime minister set about fashioning an image of a Thai leader who, on the one hand, was decidedly pro-Asian and, on the other, was determined to cultivate a strong sense of Thai pride and dignity.
Not only did the Thaksin administration talk up its vision to strengthen ties with China and India in its first two years, it also saw Thaksin asserting during a policy speech that Thailand should distance itself from "failed economic models" such as the United States.
Little wonder that some newspaper commentators are asking whether the prime minister will be able to deliver in his new role. "Time will tell if Thailand can handle the growing demand for the US for a strong forward presence in its territory and the region," Kavi Chongkittavorn wrote in a column on regional affairs in The Nation.
--------
Indonesia Extends Martial Law in Unsettled Province
By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, November 4, 2003; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56380-2003Nov3.html
JAKARTA, Indonesia, Nov. 3 -- President Megawati Sukarnoputri's cabinet decided Monday to extend martial law in Aceh, the country's westernmost province , where government forces have been fighting separatist rebels since May, when peace talks broke down and emergency rule was declared.
While Megawati initially promised that martial law would last only six months, senior military officers have said repeatedly they intend to continue their campaign beyond the Nov. 19 deadline.
At least 40,000 security forces have pushed the rebels out of Aceh's main towns and into the mountains, but that offensive -- Indonesia's largest since its 1975 invasion of East Timor -- has not succeeded in destroying the separatist movement.
Indonesia's senior security minister, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, acknowledged after the cabinet meeting that in terms of personnel and weaponry, the rebels "still have significant power."
He also said the extension of martial law was required to ensure that voters in Aceh could participate in Indonesia's presidential and parliamentary elections next year. "Under conditions of martial law, it would be easier to guarantee the security of society and therefore to have a successful election in Aceh," Yudhoyono said. He added, "If the situation is unsafe, how can you leave your home and join the campaign?"
The government will also offer amnesty to separatists who surrender during the period of martial law, he said. The cabinet is scheduled to reconvene Thursday to determine the duration of the extension, although a minister present at the meeting Monday said it would likely be for another four to six months.
During the latest offensive, military officials said, the army has killed more than 900 members of the Free Aceh Movement, which has been fighting since 1976 for an independent homeland on the tip of the island of Sumatra. Officials said 63 soldiers and police have been killed in the recent offensive.
Some diplomats and human rights activists said that many of those killed by the security forces appeared to have been civilians. The extent of civilian casualties remains unclear because Indonesia has restricted the activities of reporters and human rights groups in the province.
While U.S. officials have said they oppose the rebels' goal of independence, they have urged Megawati to seek a peaceful resolution to the conflict and address Acehnese aspirations for greater autonomy.
-------- biological weapons
GAO Covertly Buys Bioweapons Gear from Defense Department
November 4, 2003
Arms Control Today
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2003_11/newsbriefs.asp#GAOcovertlybuys
The General Accounting Office (GAO), the auditing and investigative agency for Congress, disclosed in a congressional hearing Oct. 7 that it was able to purchase surplus laboratory and safety gear from the Defense Department that could be used in weaponizing biological agents. The discovery raised serious concerns about the widespread availability and resale of the equipment and follows reports by GAO and other federal agencies that poor oversight and lax controls at U.S. laboratories increased the odds that biological agents may have been stolen or improperly transferred.
According to the testimony, the agency established a fictitious company for the purposes of its study and purchased $46,960 worth of Defense Department biological laboratory equipment and safety gear over the Internet for $4,100. GAO investigators procured a bacteriological incubator, centrifuge, laboratory evaporator, and protective clothing from govliquidation.com, a surplus equipment reseller for the Defense Department.
The study also found that some equipment supplied by the Defense Department to other purchasers had been resold to buyers in countries such as the Philippines, Malaysia, Egypt, and United Arab Emirates, which have been known to retransfer defense-related items to countries alleged to be state sponsors of terrorism and prohibited from acquiring certain U.S. technologies. However, current federal regulations and Defense Department policies "do not generally restrict [the Defense Department] from selling our case study biological equipment to the public," GAO reported, which allows for resale beyond U.S. end-use controls.
A full GAO report with recommendations on improving controls over sensitive equipment is forthcoming.
-------- chemical weapons
New U.S., Russian Chemical Destruction Deadlines Approved
November 4, 2003
Arms Control Today
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2003_11/newsbriefs.asp#newUSrussian
States-parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention have approved the extension of U.S. and Russian interim deadlines for destroying portions of their chemical weapons holdings, leaving undetermined the final date for destroying all stockpiles.
Meeting in The Hague, the Oct. 20-24 Conference of States-Parties approved Russia's request to extend the deadline for destroying 20 percent of its 40,000 tons of declared chemical weapons to April 29, 2007. The conference, which brought together 116 countries, also agreed to push back the U.S. target date for destroying 45 percent of its 31,500-ton stockpile to December 31, 2007. The conference also approved a 2004 budget of $86 million, a 6.7 percent increase from the 2003 allocation.
Because these new deadlines will infringe on the treaty's date for Russia and the United States to destroy 100 percent of chemical weapons stockpiles, states-parties extended the final deadline "in principle" but held off setting a date pending further information from Moscow and Washington. The treaty calls for all stockpiles to be destroyed no later than April 29, 2007, but also includes provisions allowing that deadline to be extended up to five years, if necessary. Russia already has requested that the date be pushed back to 2012. (See ACT, November 2002.)
Russia and the United States have each experienced setbacks to their chemical weapons destruction programs that have forced both countries to extend the deadlines. Russia announced the destruction of one percent of its stockpile April 26-three years after the original deadline-and currently operates only one destruction facility; two additional sites are still under construction due to financial and political setbacks. (See ACT, June 2003.)
Political and operational obstacles, as well as management problems, have plagued the U.S. program. (See ACT, October 2003.) Most recently, officials overseeing construction of the Umatilla destruction facility announced a three-month delay for the start of operations at the site. Mary Binder, an Army public affairs spokesperson, said Oct. 27 that officials now expect the site to begin burning chemical weapons in June or July of 2004-over two years after the original milestone projected in 1998.
-------- europe
Man Arrested After Explosion in the Hague
By TOBY STERLING
Associated Press Writer
Nov 4, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NETHERLANDS_EXPLOSION?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) -- A teenager threw a homemade firebomb into the Turkish Embassy in The Hague on Tuesday, causing a small fire and minor injuries to five people, including himself, Dutch officials said.
Hague police chief Han Moraal said the 16-year-old suspect was arrested shortly after throwing a "bag of burning material" into the building at around 11:30 a.m. He said the youth, whom he did not identify, had an argument with embassy workers earlier in the day.
"The motive is still unclear, but there's no indication it was either a political or a terrorist attack," Moraal told reporters.
Earlier Dutch authorities said the suspect was 26.
Among the injured were three embassy workers and a visitor who jumped out of a window onto a delivery van to escape the blaze. None of those injured required hospitalization, Moraal said. Turkey's Ambassador to The Netherlands, Tacan Ildem, described the suspect to private Turkish NTV television.
He was "a man with dark features and wearing a black jacket," Ildem said, adding that the man "was not speaking Turkish, he was speaking some Dutch."
Although the Dutch secret service has warned several times since Sept. 11, 2001 that the Netherlands is at risk for a terrorist attack, Mayor Wim Deetman said there had been no intelligence about any specific attack planned in The Hague.
"There was no reason for us to take extra precautions," Deetman said.
Turkish-owned buildings in other countries have been attacked by Kurdish rebels fighting for an independent Kurdish state. There is a large Kurdish community in the Netherlands, estimated to number up to 70,000, but violent incidents are unusual.
Bombings are also extremely rare in the Netherlands. A group calling itself the Revolutionary Anti-Racist Action carried out several attacks in the early 1990s against government buildings, causing substantial material damage, but no injuries.
-------- iran
Iranians Mark 1979 U.S. Embassy Seizure
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Associated Press Writer
Nov 4, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAN_US_ANNIVERSARY?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Thousands of Iranians marked the 24th anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran by chanting anti-American slogans and burning U.S. and Israeli flags.
Tuesday's turnout was larger than that of previous years, reflecting tensions over President Bush's allegations that Iran supports terrorism and is trying to build nuclear weapons.
Hard-line cleric Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri told the crowd that the Washington is once again meddling in Iran's internal affairs. Many Iranians blame American interference for the events of 1979.
"Assuming that Iran's new youth generation does not remember the 1979 revolution and will not support the Islamic establishment, the Americans have been encouraging riots with their final aim being regime change," Nateq Nouri said.
He was referring to student-led protests in June in which protesters called for the overthrow of the ruling Islamic establishment. Authorities arrested 4,000 people, some of them students, and unleashed hard-line vigilantes to silence the protesters. Almost all the detainees have been freed.
"This establishment will not collapse if a number of foolish people take to the streets," said Nateq Nouri, a top adviser to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Tuesday's protesters chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" - while burning an effigy of President Bush. Most were militant students, like those who stormed the embassy in 1979, holding 52 Americans hostage for more than a year.
International pressure on Iran to come clean on its nuclear program has angered hard-liners, who organized demonstrations in past weeks rejecting demands for greater cooperation with U.N. inspectors.
Faced with the possibility of U.N. sanctions, Iran relented in late October, agreeing to unfettered inspections of its nuclear facilities and giving the U.N. atomic watchdog a report on its activities.
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is seen a leader of the hard-liners, said Sunday he approved that step but warned that "excessive demands" would prompt Iran to stop cooperation.
Unelected hard-liners control the levers of power in Iran and have blocked most attempts by the elected government to reform the country's Islamic regime. Khamenei has final say in all matters.
The 1979 embassy takeover was a protest against Washington's decision to give refuge to deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, whom the revolutionary government wanted to stand trial in Iran.
Many Iranians, including reformists, still resent the U.S. government for its role in a coup that toppled the populist Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq in 1953 and its support of Pahlavi during the 1979 Islamic revolution.
-------- iraq
Explosions Rock the Center of Baghdad for a Second Night
November 4, 2003
By TERENCE NEILAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/04/international/middleeast/04CND-IRAQ.html?hp
A series of explosions rocked central Baghdad tonight Iraqi time, and up to three mortars or missiles landed inside the main coalition compound, witnesses and the Iraqi police told news agencies.
There was no immediate word on any casualties.
Military officials in Baghdad confirmed two explosions in the center of the capital, at about 7:45 p.m., but they said they had no precise locations or further information.
A similar series of blasts hit Baghdad on Monday night. Three mortars landed in the city, with at least one hitting an American Army base. No damage or casualties were reported, officials said.
Access to uncounted and unguarded weapons has become an increasing problem in Iraq, just as attacks by insurgents have been stepped up in the last month.
Allied officials have said that Saddam Hussein stockpiled at least 5,000 shoulder-fired missiles, and that fewer than a third have been recovered.
In other violence today, a soldier with the First Armored Division was killed by a roadside bomb planted by insurgents in Baghdad, military officials said.
Two other soldiers were wounded in the attack, at about 10:10 a.m. local time, and were taken to the 28th Combat Support Hospital, the United States Central Command said in a statement. No names or other details were released.
The death today brought the number of American fatalities so far this month to 23, including the 16 killed in the downing of a Chinook helicopter on Sunday in a farming village south of Falluja, west of Baghdad.
A memorial service for those killed on Sunday will be held on Thursday, the coalition provisional authority announced today. Services will be held at the Rifles Base Veterans Chapel of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment in Asad, northwest of Baghdad, a spokeswoman said..
As the daily attacks in Iraq continue to mount, Spanish civil experts and diplomatic officers have been temporarily withdrawn from Baghdad, the Spanish foreign minister, Ana Palacio, said today.
Only four or five people remain in the Spanish Embassy in the Iraqi capital. The rest of the diplomatic and administrative team, withdrawn to Jordan, will return immediately after the most recent difficult period has passed, she said.
Ms. Palacio spoke before attending a diplomatic meeting in Berlin, when questioned about a report published today in the Spanish daily El Mundo that cited unnamed but high-level diplomatic officials in Iraq.
The foreign minister said that Spain plans to move its embassy to a more secure building, reduce its staff and streamline its institutions so that all personnel are located in one place.
Prime Minister José María Aznar, also in Berlin, told reporters that the temporary withdrawal is not an evacuation but a move to open up a process of consultation and evaluation of the situation.
A spokesman for the opposition Socialist Party, Jesús Caldera, criticized the government for withdrawing its diplomats while leaving Spanish soldiers to fend for themselves in a mission that the government called humanitarian, while other countries recognize that Iraq is still at war.
The withdrawal comes after a Spanish Navy captain was killed in the truck bombing of the United Nations compound on Aug. 19, and a sergeant working for Spain's military intelligence was shot dead in Baghdad on Oct. 9.
The Spanish action follows similar moves by the Netherlands and Bulgaria, both of which withdrew their staffs last month to Amman, Jordan.
Spain has about 1,300 troops based in Iraq, the Netherlands has 1,198, and Bulgaria about 500.
Last week the number of Americans killed in Iraq since President Bush proclaimed the end of major combat operations exceeded the 116 American combat deaths in the war to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
The tempo of the attacks has increased as well, to an average of 33 a day at the end of October from around 12 a day in July, a military spokesman said last week.
Mr. Bush has blamed outside militants and ousted members of Mr. Hussein's security forces for the attacks. American military commanders on the ground, however, have said they have not seen significant infiltration of foreign fighters into Iraq.
Dale Fuchs contributed to this report from Madrid.
--------
OCCUPATION
In Die-Hard City, G.I.'s Are Enemy
November 4, 2003
By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/04/international/middleeast/04FALL.html?pagewanted=all&position=
FALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 3 - In the epicenter of anti-American hatred, even the most generous of gestures is viewed with a suspicious eye.
The day after 16 American servicemen died when their helicopter was shot out of the sky here, a group of American soldiers tossed handfuls of candy from their Humvees to the Iraqi children who lined the road.
"Don't touch it, don't touch it!" the Iraqi children squealed. "It's poison from the Americans. It will kill you."
The Humvees rumbled past, and the candy stayed in the dirt.
Loathing for the American occupiers looms everywhere in this hardscrabble city, where Saddam Hussein won strong support in exchange for privileges and patronage. Hatred laces the conversations. It hangs from the walls. It burns in the minds of children. As nowhere else in Iraq, Falluja bristles with a desire to confront the American soldiers, to kill them and to celebrate when they fall.
Although large number of Iraqis elsewhere are cooperating with the Americans, for the soldiers trying to pacify this Hussein stronghold, the road seems long and hard.
"These people hate the Americans," said Specialist Emily Donaghy, who lives behind high walls on an American base outside town. "It's going to take generation after generation before these people realize what America has done for them."
On Monday, American soldiers picked over the scene of the sharpest demonstration yet of the locals' passion: the shooting down, with a surface-to-air missile, of an American helicopter loaded with soldiers.
The downing of the helicopter, which crashed and burned in a field outside of town, prompted celebrations from many local residents. While anti-American feeling does not extend to everyone in Falluja - G.I.'s have found a handful of allies - it is difficult to find anyone here willing to express appreciation for the American presence.
The strong feelings were evident here early on when American soldiers killed 18 anti-American protesters during a clash in April.
Even a group of American-trained Iraqi police officers, who American officials hope will help crack down on the insurgents, could not bring themselves to say anything positive about the occupation.
"We want them out of here," said an Iraqi officer who gave only one name, Ahmed. He said he and his colleagues were threatened by local Iraqis for collaborating with the Americans, but he said his detractors had it all wrong.
"I don't work with the Americans; I don't take orders from them," Mr. Ahmed said. "I am doing this for my country."
Falluja lies in the heart of what is known as the Sunni Triangle, an area stretching west and north of Baghdad that was the foundation of support for Mr. Hussein. It is this area where most attacks on American soldiers have been carried out. They began in the spring and have continued since. On Monday, a bomb near Tikrit, Mr. Hussein's hometown 100 miles north of here, killed another American soldier, Reuters quoted the United States military as saying.
In other parts of the country, in the north and in the south, Iraqis often welcome the Americans as their liberators and as their tutors in fostering democratic rule. .
In places like Falluja, people often had a direct stake in Mr. Hussein's rule, receiving preferential treatment in hiring and larger salaries.
One of the lucky ones was Saad Hamid, who operates a sidewalk tea stand in downtown Falluja. Before the war, he said, he worked in an Iraqi arms factory, earning almost $1,000 a month, an extraordinarily high salary here. Then the Americans arrived, the arms factory was closed, and Mr. Hamid lost his job. Now he pours tea for pennies a glass, and he nurtures his resentments.
Mr. Hamid remains a faithful follower of the deposed Iraqi leader. To illustrate, he held up two pieces of Iraqi currency for an American visitor, the old Iraqi note, with the visage of Mr. Hussein, and the new one issued since the Americans took over, which contains no such figure.
"The old currency is better," he said, pointing to the face of Mr. Hussein, "because Saddam is on it."
A day after the downing of the helicopter, a company of American soldiers stood guard over the site as a huge crane lifted the wreckage from the ground and loaded it into trucks. Officers said Monday that many of those killed and wounded on the helicopter were from the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, based in Fort Carson, Colo.
"We are gathering up all the pieces," Capt. Scott Kirkpatrick said.
Pentagon officials said Monday that the American military had counted about 20 attacks on allied aircraft by similar surface-to-air missiles since June. Pentagon and military officials said preliminary reports indicated that two missiles had been fired. It appears that the attackers fired twice so that if the first missile missed, the flight path of the second could be adjusted to compensate, a Pentagon official said.
Just down the road from the site of the crash, a crowd of young men and boys gathered to watch. Some carried small pieces of the helicopter they had picked up since the crash.
One man in the crowd was Khalid Abdullah Jassem. Like the others, he exulted over the crash of the American helicopter, yet at least one of the reasons he gave for his feelings seemed misplaced.
Whenever the Chinook helicopters flew overhead, Mr. Jassem said, the American soldier stationed at the back of the helicopter always hung his feet out of the back door. Showing the bottoms of one's shoes, in a person's home, for example, is a sign of disrespect in the Muslim world.
Informed that American soldiers manning the gun at the rear of Chinook helicopters usually sat the same way regardless of the country they were in and meant no offense, Mr. Jassem shook his head.
"I didn't like Saddam, but he was better than the Americans," he said.
For all the intensity of the fighting here, the Americans show no signs of turning back. Over the weekend, the downtown office of Falluja's American-backed mayor was attacked eight times, often in daylight. The mayor was beaten up, and the American liaison office was destroyed.
Capt. Ryan Huston, who spent two sleepless nights defending the police station, seemed hardly bothered by the attacks.
"They are trying to take over this town and turn it into a stronghold," Captain Huston said. "And we are not going to let them do it."
--------
'The Battlefield for All Iraq'
Intense Resistance Mounted in Fallujah
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, November 4, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59891-2003Nov3?language=printer
FALLUJAH, Iraq, Nov. 3 -- This city's pro-American mayor is on the run after his office was gutted by a bomb. The four-lane main street is lined with craters and patches of charred pavement from almost daily attacks on U.S. military convoys. A cornfield a few miles to the southwest is littered with the wreckage of an Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter that was brought down Sunday with a shoulder-fired missile.
Six months after President Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq, this deeply traditional Sunni Muslim city on the Euphrates River has become the most intense battleground between American troops and the myriad forces seeking to end the U.S. occupation.
There is little agreement between American commanders and local leaders about why Fallujah, where violence had been ebbing over the summer, has become such a flash point. Officers with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, which arrived here two months ago, contend their predecessors were not aggressive enough in rooting out resistance fighters, who had come to regard Fallujah as a haven. The city's tribal sheiks take the opposite view, maintaining that the 82nd Airborne's hard-nosed tactics have alienated residents and fueled more anger at the U.S. occupation.
"Fallujah has now become the battlefield for all Iraq," said Mustafa Naji, 19, a religious student. "Everyone is coming here to fight."
American and Iraqi officials say they believe resistance forces in Fallujah comprise Iraqis loyal to former president Saddam Hussein, Islamic extremists and foreign militants, many of whom were drawn here after clashes between residents and American soldiers transformed this otherwise unremarkable trading post about 30 miles west of Baghdad into a front line in the resistance fight.
Seeking to counter those resistance forces are about 1,000 paratroops from the 82nd Airborne. Instead of driving around the city in armored personnel carriers and entrusting security duties to ill-trained Iraqi police officers and militiamen -- as other military units occupying the city did -- they have swept through the bustling market and residential neighborhoods on foot patrols, conducting surprise searches and raids with a greater frequency.
Units that preceded the 82nd Airborne, including the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and the 3rd Infantry Division, "rode around town in their armored vehicles, got shot at and didn't shoot back," one soldier with the 82nd said, echoing a sentiment expressed by his fellow paratroops. "We're here to show them that we're going to shoot back."
Unlike in almost every other part of Iraq, U.S. military commanders operating in and around Fallujah do not bother to talk of "winning Iraqi hearts and minds" -- a favorite phrase among Pentagon officials. Instead, their mission is focused almost exclusively on high-intensity combat operations.
"I expect to get attacked every day -- every single day," said Lt. Col. Brian Drinkwine, commander of the 1st Battalion of the 82nd Airborne's 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, which is responsible for securing Fallujah and its surrounding area. "That may come in the form of a mortar attack, a drive-by shooting at the mayor's office, a vehicle ambush -- or a combination of all three."
But the 82nd Airborne's strategy, backed at the highest levels of the U.S. military, has rankled some of Fallujah's senior tribal sheiks -- the city's effective power brokers -- who maintain it is creating more enemies than it is eliminating.
"The Americans are wrong," said Khamis Hassnawi, the city's senior tribal leader. "Using more force will not solve the problems here."
Clash of Cultures
Hassnawi and other city leaders say they are incensed by what they call the excessive use of firepower by American soldiers, particularly after roadside bombings. City officials and witnesses said six civilians traveling to work in a minivan were killed on Oct. 27 when soldiers from the 82nd sprayed the street with bullets after a bomb exploded near their convoy. A week earlier, two civilians were killed by soldiers who opened fire after another bombing, local officials said.
"The Americans are creating enemies by the way they are treating people," said Feras Khalil, a psychology teacher. He said his house was hit with a 10-minute fusillade of American gunfire on Saturday evening after an attacker standing on the street fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the mayor's office, where a contingent of paratroops was stationed. The soldiers, who believed the grenade was fired from inside Khalil's house, responded with 40 Mark-19 grenades, a light antitank weapon and 1,000 rounds of small-arms fire.
"There is no justification for what they did," Khalil growled as he pointed at dozens of bullet pockmarks on the front of his two-story stucco house.
He said six members of his family were inside at the time of the shooting, preparing to break their day-long Ramadan fast. Everyone took shelter in a windowless back bedroom, trembling with fear, Khalil said. "We couldn't do anything to defend ourselves," he said.
Khalil said he initially welcomed American troops as liberators, assuming they would quickly hold democratic elections, invigorate the economy and fund public works projects. "They promised us a lot," he said. "We haven't gotten anything from them."
Instead, he argued, U.S. troops have made matters worse by behaving in culturally insensitive ways. "The male soldiers search our women," he said. "When they arrest people, they put their shoes on people's heads," a grave insult in the Arab world.
Although such actions were rare and were prohibited by American commanders early in the occupation, residents say such offenses are now a daily occurrence.
"We are a very traditional city," Khalil said. "They don't understand our culture and customs -- and that angers us."
Turn for the Worse
In the weeks after Hussein's government fell, Fallujah was effectively ignored by American commanders. Tensions were ignited on April 28, however, when soldiers from the 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment opened fire on a group of protesters in front of a school, killing 15 and wounding more than three dozen others. Although the military said the soldiers fired in self-defense under attack from Baathist provocateurs, residents said many of the demonstrators were unarmed.
The shooting set off a cycle of violence that wracked the city for weeks. Exchanges of gunfire and rocket-propelled grenade attacks started to occur almost daily.
By early June, senior U.S. commanders realized they had a problem in Fallujah. In response, they dispatched a brigade from the 3rd Infantry Division. The brigade sought to quell Fallujah by reducing confrontations with residents. The unit also withdrew its solders from positions inside the city and entrusted more security duties to newly hired police officers and the U.S.-sanctioned militia group known as the Fallujah Protection Force.
When the 3rd Infantry left in early August, it was replaced by the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which adopted the same strategy. "They understood us better. They didn't provoke the people like they are doing now," said Hassnawi, the senior sheik.
But because the 3rd Cavalry was responsible for a vast area of Iraq stretching from Baghdad's western suburbs to the Jordanian border, it had relatively few troops devoted to Fallujah -- which commanders with the 82nd Airborne say helped embolden the resistance and attract new fighters.
"Because there was an economy of force in the west early on, we believe this has been an area where the former regime loyalists, senior Baathist members and some extremists have created a safe haven for themselves," said Col. Jefforey Smith, commander of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment.
"What we're seeing is their reaction to our increased activities," he said. "They know we're here and they know we're here to root them out."
Smith disputed accounts from residents that his soldiers have used excessive force. "Our response every time has been to return fire on known enemy forces in a discriminate way, not an indiscriminate way," he said.
But, he said, "if former regime loyalists or extremists make a decision to attack us with improvised explosive devices, small arms or rocket-propelled grenades, we will return fire and we will return fire in an overwhelming way."
A Show of Force
On Friday afternoon, just after midday prayers, a bomb exploded inside the office of Mayor Taha Bedawi, who had cooperated with U.S. forces since his appointment by the city's tribal sheiks in April.
The blast riled people living nearby. They said the bomb was planted by someone inside the office to fuel the campaign against the resistance forces, who would likely be blamed. Several neighbors went to the office to complain. A melee ensued, during which one of the mayor's guards killed one of the neighbors, triggering a small riot.
Responding to a call for assistance from the mayor, the 82nd Airborne took over the office on Friday evening to prevent additional unrest. The Americans showed up with massive force: Two reinforced platoons swooped in, supported from the air by armed OH-58D Kiowa Warrior scout helicopters and a U.S. Air Force AC-130 Spectre gunship, which is capable of firing 1,800 rounds per minute.
After the 82nd arrived, a fierce firefight erupted in which Iraqi fighters fired four or five rocket-propelled grenades into the compound, wounding four paratroops, two of them seriously. The Americans responded with an antitank missile, small arms and a .50-caliber machine gun, according to soldiers engaged in the fight.
"It felt like it was Beirut," Drinkwine said. "It was that tense."
On Saturday, as more troops arrived at the mayor's compound to replace those who had been there since Friday night, Sgt. 1st Class Roger Parker described the mission: to hold the compound so that it would not be overrun. By that point, there were no Iraqis in the burned and badly damaged facility. It was simply a question of holding the compound for the sake of holding it.
After responding to another rocket-propelled grenade that was launched their way -- the one from the direction of Khalil's house -- the paratroops abandoned the compound at 3 a.m. Sunday, having made the point that they were willing to come in with force and back up their Iraqi allies.
Mayor Is Forced Out
By Sunday night, Bedawi was no longer mayor. Hassnawi and the other sheiks who appointed him told him that reports that the bombing was an inside job and the shooting of the neighbor were too much. He would have to leave.
Bedawi fled Fallujah that night, his associates said. By Monday morning, the mayor's security detail had disappeared from his office. In its place were several policemen who refused to let visitors into the compound.
Hassnawi said a caretaker mayor had been appointed for a 15-day term while the sheiks choose a permanent replacement.
There were various explanations as to why Bedawi was removed. Hassnawi said the mayor "had become too weak" to crack down on resistance fighters. Other tribal leaders said it was because he had grown too dependent on the Americans.
Leaning back on a pillow on the floor of his living room, Hassnawi said the American commanders needed to back down and empower Iraqi leaders to quell the violence by giving them money to reopen factories and get people back to work. "If people have jobs, if they're happy, they're not going to be supporting these people," he said. "The solution is reconstruction."
Hassnawi said public chants of support for Hussein, often voiced after successful attacks on U.S. convoys, are not an accurate measure of how people in Fallujah feel. "Nobody really likes Saddam," he said. "They're just very frustrated with the Americans. They expected more from them by now. They can't believe the world's most powerful country is doing so little to help people here."
Military officials contend the fighting in and around Fallujah has hindered civil reconstruction operations. "You can't get the [assessment] teams out to look at the projects," said Capt. Anthony Ross, a civil affairs team leader.
Unlike commanders from the 101st Airborne Division in northern Iraq, the 4th Infantry Division north of Baghdad and the 1st Armored Division in the capital, officers with the 82nd do not express confidence that they are winning a war of attrition.
"It seems like every enemy we get, there's another one to take his place," said one lieutenant. "I don't know whether that's true or not. That's above me. But that's the way it seems."
--------
Four Wounded in Baghdad Blasts on U.S. HQ
November 4, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-blasts.html
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Insurgents fired several mortars or rockets at the U.S.-led administration headquarters in the Iraqi capital Baghdad Tuesday, wounding four people in the second brazen attack on the compound in as many nights.
The explosions boomed across Baghdad and were felt by Reuters reporters staying in a hotel across the river Tigris.
The Pentagon said three of the wounded were from the U.S.-occupation forces, although it was not known if they were military or civilian.
An Iraqi guard at the scene said three explosions hit the compound itself, one of Saddam Hussein's former palace complexes, but a U.S. army spokesman in Baghdad could not confirm that.
``There were three explosions in central Baghdad but we don't know where. There are four reported wounded,'' said the spokesman.
Earlier, U.S. troops in Humvees with powerful spotlights sped to an area along the nearby Tigris, where gunfire was heard.
``There were a lot of soldiers running around, there was a lot of panic. I haven't seen any injured people,'' said Mohammad Shikri, the Iraqi guard at the complex. Journalists were prevented from entering the area.
In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. James Cassella, said preliminary reports were unclear on the location of the blasts.
He said initial reports suggested they might have been caused by projectiles such as a missile or mortar fire and not a car or truck bomb, but that was not certain.
At least one plume of smoke rose from the area for some minutes straight after the blasts, although it later disappeared.
The blasts follow a mortar attack on the complex Monday that caused no casualties.
The compound lies on the western bank of the Tigris.
On Oct. 26, guerrillas fired rockets at a hotel inside the complex while U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying there, killing a U.S. soldier and wounding at least 15 people.
The following day, 35 people were killed in four suicide attacks at the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross and three police stations in the capital.
-------- israel / palestine
Arafat Extends Term of Emergency Cabinet
November 4, 2003
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/04/international/middleeast/04CND-MIDE.html?hp
Yasir Arafat extended the term of the Palestinian emergency cabinet today, an indication that more time may be needed to resolve differences with the prime minister over who will wield authority over security forces.
Mr. Arafat's senior aide, Nabil Abu Rdainah, said in a statement reported by the Palestinian News Agency that Mr. Arafat asked Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei "to continue his work and consider his government as a caretaker until a new one is formed and the confidence of the legislative council is obtained."
The creation of a new, permanent cabinet will remove some of the political uncertainty that has been plaguing the Palestinians. It is also considered crucial to reviving a peace plan with Israel that is meant to end more than three years of violence.
Mr. Qurei's one-month term as the head of an emergency cabinet was due to expire at midnight today and he was expected to name a new lineup of ministers.
But after the emergency cabinet met, Mr. Qurei gave no sign of when he would announce a permanent cabinet, though he said he would seek approval for one from Parliament next week.
"A session for the Palestinian Legislative Council will convene next week for a confidence vote," Reuters quoted him as telling reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Mr. Qurei, who had threatened to quit just days after taking his job on an emergency basis, has been locked in a dispute with Mr. Arafat over the division of security powers. The Palestinian leader has opposed Mr. Qurei's nomination for interior minister, Gen. Nasser Yousuf.
The Palestinian News Agency statement said Mr. Arafat met the emergency cabinet after its weekly meeting, in which the ministers recommended "the formation of the next government at the earliest possible opportunity."
The statement also said Mr. Qurei presented a report on recent diplomatic talks on ways to unfreeze the peace process. It said Palestinians have had contacts with Israeli leaders to explore their "readiness in returning to the peace track," adding that Palestinians were ready for dialogue to end the violence. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel has proposed renewed high-level talks aimed at restarting the stalled peace plan backed by the United States, known as the road map.
The Palestinian statement gave no further details. But senior leaders from the two sides have quietly resumed behind-the-scenes discussions in an effort to revive the plan.
Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli defense minister, acknowledged on Monday that he had been meeting Palestinians. He declined to identify them, but Palestinian and Israeli officials identified Mr. Mofaz's negotiating partner as Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian finance minister.
On Monday, the Palestinian Legislative Council elected Rafiq al-Natsheh as its new speaker, permanently replacing Mr. Qurei, who had served in that post from 1996.
--------
Sharon Departs Moscow With Only Sympathy
November 4, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Israel.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told visiting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Tuesday that there is no alternative to the ``road map'' Middle East peace plan.
But an Israeli official said Ivanov agreed that Moscow would rethink its plan to introduce a U.N. Security Council resolution on the plan.
Ivanov did not promise to kill the resolution, which would seek the Security Council's endorsement of the road map, an official traveling with Sharon said on condition of anonymity.
Ivanov in turn called for a renewed dialogue over the road map, which he said ``remains without alternative the plan for promoting peace in the Middle East,'' according to a Foreign Ministry statement.
The meeting came on the second and last day of Sharon's third visit to Russia as prime minister. He returned home late in the day, telling reporters on the flight that bilateral ties with Russia were important. ``I need to come here more than once a year,'' he quipped.
Sharon, meeting with President Vladimir Putin on Monday, had also failed to win any guarantees that Russia would meet his requests to drop the U.N. resolution on the ``road map'' plan or act against what Israelis say is a covert Iranian nuclear arms program.
Nor did he get any firm pledge from Putin that Russia would pressure Syria to rein in the radical Islamic Hezbollah group in Lebanon, a senior Israeli official said Monday on condition of anonymity.
The senior official said Sharon told Putin the road map was aimed at forging an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians and could not work if imposed by outsiders.
Israel only reluctantly accepted the road map, attaching a list of reservations making its implementation dependent on the Palestinians' disarming and disbanding militant groups and stipulating that any monitoring be under U.S. control.
A major part of the one-on-one portion of Monday's summit was devoted to Israel's fears that Iran is covertly trying to develop nuclear weapons, the senior official said.
Sharon told Putin that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a threat not only to Israel but to world peace.
``My impression is that (the Russians) see the danger,'' the senior official said, adding that Putin and Sharon agreed to keep up consultations on the issue.
Russia's relations with Israel have improved dramatically since the Soviet collapse, and Moscow has played a role in peace efforts as part of the international quartet also including the United States, the United Nations and the European Union.
The presence of 1 million Russian-speaking immigrants, one-sixth of Israel's population and a powerful political force, has become an important factor in bilateral relations.
In an interview given to NTV television before leaving Moscow, Sharon reiterated his opposition to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat but would not comment on the substance of his talks with Russian leaders.
``If the Palestinians want to keep Arafat as a symbol -- though I don't know what specifically he embodies -- it's the business of the Palestinians. As for his political influence, Arafat must not have such influence,'' Sharon said.
Also Tuesday, Ivanov and Sharon discussed joint projects in defense sales and high-technology. Ivanov also reiterated Putin's condemnation of recent remarks by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad that ``Jews rule the world.''
-------- latin america
Powell Presses Nicaragua to Destroy Missiles
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 4, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60012-2003Nov3.html
MANAGUA, Nicaragua, Nov. 3 -- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell pressed the Nicaraguan government on Monday to reduce its military arsenal, calling for the destruction of nearly 2,000 surface-to-air missiles accumulated when the Marxist Sandinista movement was in power.
The Soviet-made missiles, similar to the one that downed a U.S. helicopter in Iraq on Sunday, are considered a danger to civil aviation and a threat to government forces if they were to be sold on the Central American arms market.
"I do not believe they add any security to Nicaragua. I think they are frankly a burden," Powell said, noting that President Bush had raised the issue with Nicaragua's president, Enrique Bolaños.
Bolaños told reporters that he considers the missiles a risk to life and Nicaragua's reputation, but he stopped short of pledging to destroy the weapons. He said their fate is tied to upcoming regional negotiations over the balance of forces.
In 2001, a shipment of 3,000 AK-47 assault rifles acquired from Nicaragua turned up in the hands of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a paramilitary group. The weapons were disguised with false paperwork.
Midway through a quick visit to three Central American countries, Powell was pushing the message that governments in the region must scale back their militaries, fight corruption and reform their economies if they expect to pull their sputtering economies out of trouble.
U.S. negotiators are working to complete a Central American Free Trade Agreement for delivery to Congress next year. The next round of negotiations is scheduled to begin Nov. 16 in Miami, with the politically difficult issues of sugar and textiles still unresolved.
Nicaragua, a country of 5 million suffering from an economic slump and the high costs of servicing $6.5 billion in debt, is seeking help from the International Monetary Fund, but the divided National Assembly must first produce reforms recommended by the IMF.
Bolaños rose to office on an anti-corruption pledge and pushed to eliminate former president Arnoldo Aleman's immunity from prosecution for allegedly embezzling $100 million. The two men are in the same Constitutionalist Liberal Party, but Aleman's supporters remain bitter, leaving Bolaños with minimal support among his colleagues.
Opposition Sandinista politicians have backed Bolaños on corruption issues but have challenged his attempts to pass austerity measures sought by the IMF. One of Powell's goals here is to meet politicians to urge them to support Bolaños.
Powell wants to show solidarity with Bolaños, said a State Department official who described the Nicaraguan leader as "fighting a difficult and very lonely fight against corruption." Sixteen years ago, Powell was the self-described "chief administration advocate" for congressional funding of the contras battling the Sandinista government.
Today, as Powell became the first U.S. secretary of state to visit the country since 1992, a military band played "The Star-Spangled Banner" on the airport tarmac and Bolaños spoke of the 100 Nicaraguan land mine specialists and doctors attached to the U.S.-led occupation force in Iraq.
Powell stopped in Panama earlier Monday, where he attended a lunch hosted by President Mireya Moscoso in honor of the 100th anniversary of the country's independence from Colombia. At the lunch, attended by more than a dozen world leaders, Powell said he "shook hands and exchanged pleasantries" with Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian. The encounter could raise questions in China, where the government has long demanded that U.S. officials avoid high-level contacts with Taiwanese officials.
-------- nato
Germany Questions Legality of Iraq War
The U.S. toppled Saddam Hussein, but was it a legal military action?
04.11.2003
Deutsche Welle
http://www.dw-world.de/english/0,3367,1432_A_1022121_1_A,00.html
German Defense Minister Peter Struck re-ignited the transatlantic spat over the Iraq war by questioning the legality of the U.S.-led invasion. He said American unilateralism endangered NATO's principle of consensus.
For a while it looked like the United States and Germany had pushed their differences over the Iraq war behind them and were on a course to repair damaged ties. Germany voted in favor of the most recent United Nations resolution on Iraq, put forth by the Washington administration, and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder shook hands with President George Bush while offering tentative technical support in rebuilding the war-torn country.
But on Monday evening in Berlin, the mending started to unravel again as German Defense Minister Peter Struck lashed out at the United States for ignoring the international community and criticized the Bush administration for endangering NATO's principle of consensus decision-making.
Speaking at an international security conference just a stone's throw away from a press conference for outgoing NATO Secretary General George Robertson, who was in Berlin as part of a farewell trip to member states, Struck said that forming so-called "coalitions of the willing," such as the one created by Washington ahead of the invasion of Iraq, jeopardized NATO solidarity. In an unexpected swipe at the leading NATO country, Struck said it would be more politically astute for the United States to act multilaterally and in tune with other NATO partners.
Ad hoc relationships, he said, could not replace the long-standing alliance, but they would reduce NATO to the role of a military "toolbox" for the United States to use at its whim. The German defense minister stressed that the alliance's principle of consensus was not simply a nuisance that could be overlooked whenever one of the members felt inclined to go their own way.
"NATO must not be seen as a servant implementing the decisions made in Washington," Struck went on to say. "Anybody who wants a strong NATO must prevent this from happening."
Questioning war's legality
Struck addressed German concerns over the Bush administration's new doctrine of preemptive military action to curb potential security threats before they fully materialize.
"Preventive (military) action requires unambiguous intelligence," he said. "The weapons of mass destruction which cannot be found in Iraq have shown how thin the ice can be when one embarks on a war of self-defense on the basis of supposedly clear proof of an imminent threat."
Therefore, Struck said he saw reason enough to question the legality of the war, which Washington and London justified by arguing that Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction posed a threat to peace in the region and world. "One can ask the question whether what the United States did in Iraq was legitimate under international law," he said.
In general, Struck was critical of NATO jumping too quickly to military action as a solution to world conflicts. "Military power has its limits," he cautioned. "It alone does not enable successful 'nation building' or lasting stability of the kind that is needed in the Balkans, in Afghanistan or in Iraq," the minister said referring to regions where military presence is still vital to maintaining peace.
For this reason, Struck stressed that NATO partners, Europe and the United States must work closer together and in consensus to bring stability to the "Greater Middle East," including Iraq.
-------- pacific
Johnston Atoll: The end of an era
After years of use by the U.S. military, the remote atoll is reverting to the wild
By Gregg K. Kakesako gkakesako@starbulletin.com
Workers reflect on a worthwhile job http://starbulletin.com/2003/11/06/news/story4.html
Time line of the atoll's history http://starbulletin.com/2003/11/06/news/story3.html#jump
JOHNSTON ATOLL - After nearly seven decades of military control, these four small Pacific islands are slowly going to the birds.
By next summer almost all of the man-made structures will be gone. Even the 9,000-foot runway, which dominates the main island of Johnston Atoll, will be closed -- even for emergency use -- because it will be too expensive to operate.
The only inhabitants will be 20 species of migratory seabirds, 315 species of fish, 34 species of coral, as well as green sea turtles and Hawaiian monk seals.
There are no longer armed guards patrolling the main island. The high-security fences that surrounded everything -- including munition bunkers and chemical weapons disposal incinerators -- are gone. The incinerator's two red-and-white smokestacks are no longer a dominant feature on the south end of the island.
Gary McCloskey, site manager for the Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System, said it took the Army two years to build the two-story, 80,000-square-foot facility that housed the incinerators, testing laboratories and control centers, "and only two months to demolish it."
Yesterday, with nearly 100 current and past civilian workers looking on, McCloskey unveiled a plaque on southwest Johnston Island before a 3-foot coral plateau. That coral cap, covering more than 50,000 square feet, is the only reminder of the United States' first chemical weapons disposal facility -- now eradicated and the site cleaned up.
The only remaining task falls to the U.S. Air Force, the landowner since 1948, whose job will be to return Johnston Island -- about 2 miles long and a quarter-mile wide -- to a near-pristine state.
Johnston Atoll, near the center of the northern Pacific 825 miles southwest of Honolulu, has been a national bird sanctuary since 1926. However, in 1934, under an executive order signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the military began sharing the atoll with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
"Our job is to monitor the wildlife resources there," said Don Palawski, refuge manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife's Pacific Remote Islands National Wildlife Refuge Complex. "That allows them to focus on their main mission."
Since World War II the Pentagon's attention has centered on Johnston Island, which, through dredging and fill, has grown to 625 acres from 46. The atoll consists of a 9-mile reef and two modified natural islands: Johnston and Sand. Johnston Island has been a mid-Pacific refueling and supply center, a nuclear atmospheric test site and, more recently, the home of the Army's chemical weapons disposal system.
Not only was Johnston enlarged, the Navy added two new islands to the atoll: North (Akau) with 25 acres and East (Hikina) with 18 acres. Twelve acres were added to Sand Island, enlarging it to 22 acres.
Three years ago the last of 4 million pounds of bombs, rockets, mines, mortars and explosives were destroyed. At one time Johnston Atoll held 6.6 percent of the nation's stockpile of chemical weapons -- 412,000 different types of explosives. Automated equipment disassembled the munitions, removed the explosive components and drained the chemical agents. The chemical agents and the explosives were then incinerated.
Waste was disposed of on Johnston or shipped to the U.S. mainland, according McCloskey, who managed the disposal for 13 years.
The incinerators were built in 1985 after Congress mandated that the Army destroy all of its chemical weapons -- mainly mustard and nerve agents -- which had been stockpiled on Johnston since 1971. When the munition disposal began on June 30, 1990, it became the United States' first chemical weapons disposal facility. The Army spent $120 million a year and destroyed its last lethal batch Nov. 29, 2000.
More than $412 million was set aside for the Army to clean up the disposal site.
"They did a very good job," said Palawski. "They were responsible."
Air Force Lt. Col. Mark Hostletter said the remaining 150 buildings -- desalination and power plants, barracks and living quarters, bowling alley, outdoor theater, mess hall, gymnasium, library and post office -- will be torn down by June. Seventy concrete bunkers and a three-story command center will remain.
"We're not sure what we plan to do," Palawski said. "A lot depends on the Air Force. We're waiting to see what they plan to do."
One of the major problems still facing the Air Force stems from the nuclear atmospheric tests in the 1960s. The accidental explosion of a Thor missile in 1962 contaminated a small portion of the island with plutonium oxide.
Carol Gaudette, Johnston Atoll manager for the Air Force, said that $28.4 million has been set aside for environmental cleanup and another $24.3 million for demolition work. She estimated that the Air Force cleanup will be completed by June.
--
Johnston Atoll timeline A historic look at the atoll:
- Sept. 2, 1796: Accidentally discovered by Capt. Joseph Pierpoint when his ship, the American brig Sally, ran aground.
- 1856: Claimed by the United States to harvest guano (seabird excrement) for use as fertilizer. Mined until deposits depleted in 1890.
- 1858: Annexed by both the United States and Kingdom of Hawaii.
- 1926: Designated as a federal bird refuge.
- 1934: President Franklin Roosevelt places atoll under Navy control.
- 1941: Shelled by Japanese after the Pearl Harbor attack.
- 1948: Placed under U.S. Air Force control.
- 1950s and 1960s: Used for atmospheric nuclear testing.
- 1971: Army starts to stockpile 6.6 percent of its chemical weapons, moving them from Oki- nawa under Operation Red Hat.
- 1985: Congress orders disposal of all stockpiled chemical agents and munitions. Construction begins on incineration plant. Target: 2004.
- June 30, 1990: Johnston Atoll weapons destruction operations begin.
- January 1993: A burster charge or booster cup of 105 mm artillery shell ignites, but no World War I-era mustard gas contained in shell is released. No injuries.
- March 23, 1994: Accidental release of lethal nerve gas GB, or sarin. EPA fines Army $122,000.
- Nov. 19, 1994: A 6-foot rocket drained of chemicals explodes. No leaks reported.
- January 1995: A U.S. General Accounting Office report criticizes program's costs.
- February 1995: Army requests 10-year extension of EPA permit; granted in March.
- Nov. 29, 2000: Destruction operations end. More than 4 million pounds destroyed, involving 400,000 rockets, projectiles, bombs, mortars, containers and mines.
- April 12, 2001: U.S. Army Chemical Activity Pacific closes. Cleanup begins.
COURTESY OF THE U.S. ARMY Last month, the plant was destroyed as the Army prepared to leave. http://starbulletin.com/2003/11/06/news/art3b.jpg
GREGG K. KAKESAKO / GKAKESAKO@STARBULLETIN.COM
Carla Heck, who heads the civilian contractor razing the buildings on Johnston, reads a plaque marking where an incinerator once stood. http://starbulletin.com/2003/11/06/news/art3c.jpg
-------- space
NASA Supporters Seek National Debate on Space Goals
By MATTHEW L. WALD
November 5, 2003
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/05/national/05SHUT.html?ei=5062&en=33f641692d3ea6b2&ex=1068613200&partner=GOOGLE&pagewanted=print&position=
ASHINGTON, Nov. 4 - After the shuttle Columbia disintegrated on Feb. 1, many supporters of NASA expected a renewed national debate on the goals of the space program. But nine months later, supporters of space exploration and the science program say that the subject appears to be in danger of slipping below the national horizon.
"There have been fits and starts of a national debate," said Senator Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina, the ranking Democrat on the Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over NASA.
Mr. Hollings plans to introduce a bill on Wednesday to create a national space commission to oversee NASA's progress in fixing the hardware and the "broken safety culture" identified in the Columbia investigation, and to help set goals.
Senator Hollings's bill, which has six sponsors, all Democrats, joins a varied flock of measures on the House side, none likely to see major action this year.
"It's not commanding anywhere near the level of attention that the Challenger did," said a House staff aide who was on Capitol Hill at the time of that accident, in 1986.
The war in Iraq helps explain the difference, the aide added, but beyond that, "space is more humdrum now," even when astronauts die.
Sean O'Keefe, the NASA administrator, said in testimony last week that the Bush administration would produce a new plan for space, including a replacement vehicle for the shuttle, now more than 20 years old. He said Congress should wait until that plan is released, but he refused to predict how long that would take.
The leisurely pace contrasts with the push by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board to complete its work over the summer so members of Congress could digest the report during their recess and be ready for a vigorous debate when they returned.
The most prominent feature of the debate so far has been a skirmish between NASA and the chairman of the House Science Committee and the ranking Democrat on the panel. The two lawmakers, Representatives Sherwood Boehlert, Republican of New York, and Ralph M. Hall, Democrat of Texas, suggested that NASA hold off on development of an orbital space plane, a crew-transport vehicle that could replace the shuttle, until an "overall vision for the human spaceflight program" emerges.
Mr. Boehlert said at a hearing on Oct. 16 that NASA would be successful "only if it's pursuing a clear and broad national consensus with sustained and adequate funding," and he added, "That hasn't been the case in three decades."
Mr. O'Keefe, responding to the letter on the orbital space plane, argued that the project was still at a conceptual stage and should proceed.
Beyond establishing a commission to oversee NASA's progress, the Senate bill to be introduced on Wednesday seeks "to address broader questions about the goals and methods we use," with specific concern for public and private investment in spaceflight and use of it. In remarks prepared for delivery on the Senate floor on Wednesday, Mr. Hollings argues that while economics of spaceflight should not take precedence over safety, "we also know that, in the past, its cost has driven us down pathways that have not resulted in success."
On the House side, Representative Bart Gordon, Democrat of Tennessee, introduced a bill that would have future accidents investigated by a presidential commission independent of NASA. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board began under a charter written after the Challenger accident, with members selected according to positions they held in the Air Force, Federal Aviation Administration and other agencies.
Mr. Gordon's bill was approved by a subcommittee but has gone no further.
Mr. Hall, the ranking Democrat on the House Science Committee, introduced a bill on Oct. 1, with 24 sponsors, including 3 Republicans, that would have the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering assemble an oversight committee, as was done after the Challenger accident. NASA has generally opposed outside oversight.
Mr. Hall also introduced an amendment to an appropriations bill that would mandate a $15 million study of shuttle crew escape, to be performed by NASA. The House passed the bill, and it is now in a conference committee.
Representative Nick Lampson, Democrat of Texas, has introduced a measure that would require NASA to develop reusable spaceships that could sit for long periods balanced between the gravitational pull of Earth and the Sun or the Moon; ships that could reach an asteroid; and, ultimately, ones that could reach Mars. The bill has 24 sponsors but has not yet been taken up in committee.
Mr. Lampson said in a telephone interview that he was glad that Senator Hollings was focused on the problem, but he added, "We don't need a commission, we need a commitment for NASA."
"If the goals get set, we will re-energize the academic community, and the space industrial community," he said, predicting that missions to Mars would "do a great deal to move this country forward."
Mr. Hollings, in a separate interview, said, "I want to go to Mars, too, but unless you get the culture changed and fixed, we're not going anywhere."
----
Boeing Establishes Orbital Space Program Office
Space Daily
Nov 04, 2003
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rocketscience-03zzh.html
St. Louis - Boeing has established an integrated Orbital Space Program office today, headquartered in Huntsville, Ala. That will provide innovative solutions for NASA and support a robust future for human space flight.
The Boeing Orbital Space Program office includes the Orbital Space Plane (OSP) and Alternate Access to Station (AAS) programs. The Orbital Space Program offers a synergistic approach to developing an integrated architecture sustaining the International Space Station and providing a foundation for the extension of human space flight beyond low Earth orbit. Boeing has designed and produced almost every major human spacecraft for NASA.
"We will provide best of industry solutions in support of both Orbital Space Plane and Assured Access to Station," said Mike Mott, vice president, NASA Systems, for Boeing.
"Our goal by combining these programs under a single, integrated program office is to benefit from their inherent synergy and leverage the best solution possible in the competition to produce the Orbital Space Plane."
Charles "Chuck" Allen has been selected as Vice President/Program Manager, Orbital Space Program, for Boeing. Allen comes to this assignment from his current position as Vice President/Program Director of the Army Systems Comanche Program Office.
He has been responsible for leading the RAH-66 Comanche helicopter program for the Boeing Sikorsky Joint Program Office team. Allen holds a bachelor's degree from Rice University and a master's degree in business administration from the University of California at Los Angeles.
"Chuck is a great addition to the NASA Systems team, bringing a wealth of flight test and management experience to this new assignment," Mott added.
The Orbital Space Plane and Alternate Access to Station programs are managed by NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville. Boeing Huntsville has a long legacy of providing technology solutions for our nation's space program. The establishment of the Orbital Space Program office in Huntsville is another example of Boeing's continued commitment to the local area and doing what is best for the NASA customer.
The OSP is envisioned to be a multipurpose spacecraft that will perform crew rescue vehicle (CRV) and crew transfer vehicle (CTV) missions for the International Space Station. The OSP will be designed to be compatible with current expendable rockets and future reusable launch vehicles.
Boeing Phantom Works is leading the Phase A study effort for OSP. AAS is a multi- year effort enabling commercial resupply services for the ISS to supplement the Space Shuttle and other international ISS cargo delivery vehicles.
A unit of Boeing, Integrated Defense Systems is one of the world's largest space and defense businesses. Headquartered in St. Louis, Boeing Integrated Defense Systems is a $25 billion business and provides systems solutions to global military, government and commercial customers.
-------- un
Classified U.S. Report On Iraq Sought by U.N.
Inspector Urges Paper's Release
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 4, 2003; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59675-2003Nov3.html
UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 3 -- The U.N.'s top nuclear weapons inspector Monday called on the United States to provide his agency with a copy of a classified American report on Iraq's banned weapons and to allow his inspectors to return to Iraq.
"If there are weapons, we would like to find [them]; if there are no weapons, we would like to conclude the issue," Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in an interview. "They owe us the classified version."
ElBaradei said the United States, like all U.N. member states, is obliged under the terms of Security Council resolutions to provide his agency with information that advances its knowledge of Iraq's past nuclear ambitions. But he said the United States has yet to respond to a request he made last month for a copy of the classified version of a report by David Kay, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, that indicated there was no new evidence Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
U.N. weapons inspectors -- who have a mandate to verify the elimination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction -- left Iraq before the invasion. The United States has not permitted them to return, except for a brief June visit by IAEA inspectors to the uranium storage facility at Tuwaitha.
ElBaradei, who was visiting New York for his annual address to the U.N. General Assembly, also said he would need more time to assess whether Iran has provided international inspectors with an adequate account of its nuclear power program.
Iran announced last week that it would temporarily stop enriching and reprocessing uranium and submit to more aggressive inspections by the nuclear agency. The IAEA board of directors is set to evaluate Iranian cooperation at a meeting Nov. 21.
ElBaradei said Monday that although there are serious gaps in Iran's accounting on its nuclear program, he welcomed Iran's decision to present his inspectors with more documentation on the program's origins.
"We can't reach a final assessment by the 21st," he said. "This will take time, but that is the nature of the verification process. As long as [we] are moving forward, as long as we are unearthing new facts and as long as we see cooperation, I am satisfied."
In his address, ElBaradei made a proposal aimed at tightening controls on Iran and other suspected nuclear weapons proliferators: He said all production of weapons-grade materials, including highly enriched uranium and plutonium, should be placed under the control of an international organization.
"In light of the increasing threat of proliferation, both by states and by terrorists," he said, the United Nations should consider restricting the production of weapons-grade fuel to "facilities under multinational control."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- terrorism
U.N. Report: al-Qaida Trained in Somalia
By ANDREW ENGLAND
Associated Press Writer
Nov 4, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SOMALIA_TERRORISM?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- Al-Qaida operatives who attacked a hotel and plane in Kenya trained, plotted and obtained weapons in neighboring Somalia, a U.N. report says, lending support to U.S. concerns the lawless Horn of Africa nation could be a haven for terrorists.
The draft report, obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, details how an al-Qaida cell trained in Mogadishu in November 2001, smuggled surface-to-air missiles from Somalia to Kenya in August 2002, then fled back to Somalia after attacking a Kenyan resort hotel and an Israeli charter aircraft on Nov. 28.
Twelve Kenyans and three Israeli tourists were killed when at least two suicide bombers rammed an explosives-laden car into the Paradise Hotel along the Indian Ocean coast. Almost simultaneously, two surface-to-air missiles were fired at an Israeli charter jet taking off from nearby Mombasa, but they missed.
At least four members of the terror cell remain in Somalia, according to the report prepared by a panel of experts appointed by the United Nations. The report did not name the four.
U.S. officials cited Somalia as a possible refuge for terrorists after the Sept. 11 attacks and placed its largest company, al-Barakaat Group of Companies, and a Somali Islamic group, al-Ittihad al-Islami, on a list of groups believed to have links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. The United States also has frozen millions of dollars in al-Barakaat assets.
About 1,800 American troops have set up base in neighboring Djibouti as part of the war on terrorism. American and coalition aircraft and vessels have conducted surveillance of Kenya and Somalia.
Somali experts and an earlier U.N. report played down the terror threat, arguing that Somalia could be used as a transit point but not likely as a terrorist base.
"This of course will probably rekindle interest," Alex Vines, an Africa expert at the London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs, said of the report.
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki said during a meeting with President Bush last month that "it is important for the U.S. to increase its involvement in this search for peace in Somalia."
Bush did not make any public commitment on expanding America's role in Somalia, where 18 U.S. soldiers were killed in 1993.
An international arms expert, who did not want to be identified, said analysts were seeing a marked change in militants in Somalia. He said Somali militants appeared more organized than before.
The U.N. experts began work in May to investigate violations of a 1992 arms embargo against Somalia - a Muslim nation that has not had an effective government since the ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.
Violations of the arms embargo have enabled terrorists to obtain small arms, portable air defense systems, light anti-tank weapons and explosives, the report said.
"The panel believes that additional weapons may have been imported into Somalia solely for the purpose of carrying out further terrorist attacks," the report said.
The panel "has also learned of recent attempts by extremist groups to procure explosives on the Mogadishu arms market, as well as ongoing militia training in the use of explosives."
U.S. and Kenyan officials believe fugitive Fazul Abdullah Mohammed masterminded the November attacks. A native of Comoros, Mohammed has been indicted by a U.S. court in the 1998 al-Qaida bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania that killed 231 people.
Shortly after the embassy attacks, al-Qaida's East Africa network reorganized under Mohammed's leadership, the report said.
In November 2001, the cell gathered in Mogadishu, where senior members "provided junior members with ideological orientation and small arms training," it said.
A month later, the group dispersed and several members returned to Kenya.
The two shoulder-fired SA-7B missiles launched at the Israeli plane were delivered to Somalia from Yemen before being smuggled by sea to Kenya in August 2002, it said.
Ahead of the Nov. 28 attacks, the report said, the terrorists split into groups: one to attack the Paradise Hotel; another, led by Fazul, was to attack the airliner; a third was in Mogadishu; and a fourth went to Lamu, an island off the Kenyan coast, to prepare for their escape to Somalia, the report said.
The day after the attacks, the terrorists regrouped in Lamu, leaving for Somalia by boat two days later and most of the team stayed in Mogadishu, "living on cash allowances provided by their Sudanese financial controller." There were no details about the Sudanese financier.
Bin Laden, a Saudi exile, took refuge in Sudan until 1996, when he fled to Afghanistan.
Johan Peleman, head of the U.N. panel, told AP there had been a reduction in major violations of the arms embargo during the last six months, but said there was a "very worrying reality" of small quantities of weapons moving into the country.
"We show that we cannot entirely isolate the problem of violations of the arms embargo of Somalia - you have to look at it from a broader regional security perspective. The case of the missiles shows that," he said.
The report is being reviewed by a U.N. sanctions committee before being sent to the Security Council.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Arrests of Dissident Iranians Seen as Hard-Line Retaliation
November 4, 2003
By NAZILA FATHI
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/04/international/middleeast/04IRAN.html
TEHRAN, Nov. 3 - The two sons of a prominent dissident cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, were arrested Monday after they defied a ban on the use of an office, the Iranian Student News Agency reported.
Ahmad and Saeed Montazeri, both mid-ranking clerics, were arrested by the Special Court of Clergy after they tried to use their building in the religious city of Qum. The building was sealed off in 1998 when their father was put under house arrest. The ban, however, was lifted in February.
The arrest seems to be part of a new crackdown on reformist activists as tension between reformers and hard-liners increases ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled on Feb. 20.
The tension was evident last week in Parliament when its Article 90 Commission issued a report accusing Tehran's hard-line public prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, of efforts to cover up the suspicious death of an Iranian-Canadian photographer.
Zahra Kazemi, the photographer, was arrested in June while she was taking pictures of the families of detainees jailed in Evin prison. She died in a Tehran hospital in July of a brain hemorrhage caused by a blow to the head.
The commission's report said Ms. Kazemi had been illegally arrested. It also accused Mr. Mortazavi of efforts to cover up the death and of forcing witnesses to change their testimony.
Mr. Mortazavi lashed out at the allegations on Monday and said he was filing a suit against the head of the commission, Hussein Ansarirad, accusing him of spreading lies, the agency reported. Mr. Mortazavi was also accused of closing dozens of reformist newspapers and of arresting journalists.
"I refused the commission's invitation because as the public prosecutor and prosecutor of Tehran's Revolutionary Court I do not recognize the commission's interference into judicial affairs as proper," he said.
---------
Palestinian Activist Is Released
Tuesday, November 4, 2003; Page A14
Robert E. Pierre
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61015-2003Nov4.html
CHICAGO, Nov. 3 -- A former Howard University professor and Palestinian activist with alleged ties to the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, was released on $1 million bail Monday after two months in jail for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating the terrorist group's finances and activities.
Abdelhaleem Ashqar, who taught at Howard for three years, had been jailed since early September, when he refused to testify after being granted immunity.
During his two months in custody, Ashqar said, he refused to eat or drink anything except water. Authorities held him in a Chicago hospital to feed him intravenously, Ashqar said in a telephone interview Monday night. He plans to return to his home in Alexandria to await trial on criminal contempt charges.
Ashqar gained national attention for a six-month hunger strike in 1998 while he was jailed for not cooperating with a New York grand jury. In a separate case in August in Chicago, Charles P. Kocoras, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, again held Ashqar in civil contempt for refusing to talk to a grand jury after he was granted immunity. He was later charged with criminal contempt but still refused to participate in what he called a witch hunt against Palestinians fighting Israeli oppression.
-------
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
-----------
Posted
without profit or payment for research and educational
purposes only,
in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.